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Dyfr^" SPENT ON A T>OGES FARM 



DAYS SPENT ON A 
DOGE'S FARM 



BY 



MARGARET SYMONDS 

H 
(MRS. W. W. VAUGHAN) 



WITH A NEW PREFACE 
AND i6 NEW ILLUSTRATIONS 



I ) > 

> , ' 



New York 

The Century Co, 

1908 






Co 

My Father, 
John Addington Symonds 



7 



d< 



" O love, we two shall go no longer 
To lands of summer across the sea." 

Tennyson. 



First Edition^ i8g^ 
Second Edition, igo8 

(All rights reserved.) 




LION OF S. MARK AND INDIAN CORN. 



CONTENTS 



Preface to the Second Edition 
Preface ..... 



Introduction ........ 

CHAP. 

I. Rise of the Pisanis and Purchase of Vescovana 

II. The Making of the Doge's Farm . 

III. First Impressions ...... 

IV. Second Thoughts ...... 



PAGE 

II 

45 

47 
53 
6o 

71 

93 



6 CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

V. May Wanderings , . . . . .112 

VI. In Early June . . . . . . 124 

VII. The Melancholy of the Plain . . .129 

VIII. Flowers of the Plain . . . . 138 

IX. The Stables and the People . . . • H5 

X. A Gromboolian Serenade . . . . 163 

XI. Old Houses of Gromboolia . . . .172 

XII. Fishing in Gromboolia . . . . 183 

XIII. The Festa of S. Antonio at Padua , .189 

XIV. The Harvest ...... 202 

XV. Gleaning ........ 209 

XVI. Threshing . . . . . . . 217 

XVII. A Day at Trissino . . . . . .223 

xviii. On the Banks of the Adige and Palazzo Rosso 244 

XIX. In the Euganean Hills . . . . .252 

XX. Last Days ....... 279 

Epilogue . . . . . . . . .282 

Index ......... 285 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Doge Alvise Pisani ..... Frontispiece 

PAGE 

Lion of S. Mark and Indian Corn ... 7 

Lamps of the Pisani Admiral ..... 47 

Home of the Long-tailed Tit . . . , 53 

The Pisani Palace at Stra .... Facing 58 -» 

BoccA delle Denoncie Secrete .... 60 

The Doge's Farm on the South Side ... 63 

Dogaressa Morosina Morosini . . . Facing 66 ^ 

From a portrait in the possession of Countess Pisani. 

Ground Plan of the Doge's Farm and Garden in 

1700 ......... 70 

Gates of the Doge's Farm . . . . . 71 

Doge Marni Grunani ..... Facing yz r 

From a portrait in the possession of Countess Pisani. 

A Gromboolian Farmhouse .... Facing j6 ^ 

Phota by Professor F. Trombini. 

7 



8 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Shrine of the Red Madonna ..... 8o 
A Garden Wall at Este in the Euganean Hills Facing 90/ 

Photo by Professor F. Trombini. 

Church and House of Vescovana, seen from the Canal 92 

Mulberry ...:.... 93 

The Tomb of Petrarch at Arqua . . . Facing 93 ^ 

The House of Petrarch at ArquX . . Facing 95 ^ 

Villa and Garden of Val San Zibio in the Euganean 

Hills ........ Facing 97 

Back of the Church at Vescovana ... 99 

Village of Vescovana, from the Canal . . .107 

Silkworm . . . . . . . . 112 

Oleander Flower . . . . . . .124 

All' Albera ........ 127 

Cardinal's Umbrella . . . . . . .129 

Living House, with Euganean Hills and Alps in the 

Distance ........ 130 

Copper Basin and Towel . . . . . .130 

Copper Water-Can . . . . . . 131 

Farmhouse and Stables . . . . . • 131 
Corner of a Gromboolian Kitchen . • . 133 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 9 

PAGE 

Farmhouse, with Vine grown over the Porch . '135 
In the Village of Vescovana . . . , 136 

Green Tree-Frog . . . . . . .138 

Yoke of a Gromboolian Ox ..... 145 

A Team of Oxen in the Garden at Vescovana Facing 146 

PAoto by Miss L. Duf Gordon. 

Farm of the Manfredini .... 
Stables, Fontana ..... 
Oxen at the Well ..... 

PAoto by Professor F. Trombini, 

Oxen and Peasants .... 

Photo by Professor F. Trombini, 

Well at the Pioppa ..... 

Doge's Cap ...... 

Cardinal's Hat ...... 

Grompa, Villa Estense .... 

Prize Bull of Signor Marchiori 

Prize Ox of Signor Marchiori 

Barchesse, Boara Pisani . . . . . .181 

Scene of the Fishing . . . . . . 184 



t • 


152 


• 


153 


Facing 


154^ 


Facing 


156 / 


• • 


160 


• 


163 


• • 


172 


• 


177 


Facing 


179/ 


Facing 


179 



10 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

The Scene of the Horse-Racing at Padua . Facing 198^^ 

Barchesse at Vescovana . . . . . .211 

In the Harvest Fields at Vescovana . . Facing 212 

A Gromboolian Peasant Girl , , . Facing zz\^ 

Photo by Walter Leaf. 

A Portrait of Canotto .... Facing 221 

Steps leading to Front Door at Trissino . . 229 

View seen looking down from the Banks of the 

Adige ....... Facing 245 ^ 

Photo by Professor F. Trombini. 

On the Banks of the Adige and Palazzo Rosso . 246 

The Pergola of Shelley's Villa at Este in the 

Euganean Hills ..... Facing 253 / 

Photo by W. W. Vaughan. 

On the Banks of a Canal .... Facing 254 '' 

The Euganean Hills seen in the background. 

The Convent of Praglia .... Facing 256 

Photo by Alinari. 

The Walls of Este in the Euganean Hills . Facing 278 ^ 

Photo by Professor W, J. Butler. 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 

A MEMORY OF COUNTESS PISANl 

ON a night in May, 1888, and therefore all but 
twenty years ago, I visited Vescovana for the 
first time. My father and I, Mr. H. F. Brown, and his 
mother, and our two Venetian gondoliers, left Venice 
in the afternoon, and in the dusk, some five hours 
later, drove up to the doors of the great villa on 
the mainland to which we had been bidden by its 
owner. My father and I were complete strangers 
to our hostess. Countess Pisani, though she knew 
and long had loved my father through his books ; 
and the invitation was to me a sort of fairy-tale epi- 
sode in our Venetian life. I was then a young girl, 
full of enthusiasm and prepared to accept every form 
of romantic impression. The great house, set down 
in the heart of that immense plain, the scent of 
syringa in the outer air, the hundreds of crimson 
roses and the lights in the rooms within — these, and 



12 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 

the sight of the gardens, the farms, and all the curious 
Italian country life as revealed by the sun the follow- 
ing morning, made a memorable impression on my 
brain. But far surpassing them was the figure of the 
lady herself whose spirit permeated and glorified that 
little paradise upon the plains, and I instantly felt 
that I was in the presence of a great personality. 
The affection and admiration thus begun, only con- 
tinued to develop through the many years in which 
1 had her friendship. 

It was near the eve of Christmas, some two months 
ago, that, sitting at breakfast in the Yorkshire dawn, 
the snow on the moors, a thin, black veil of winter 
mists upon the wild and sombre landscape without, 
I received a letter suggesting that the old book 
written about those early days in Italy should be 
reprinted. I went therefore to the wooden book 
box which held their story, and pulled the papers out. 
Stray flowers fell from amongst them — bits of brown 
roses, portions of a curious purple creeper^ which 
grew upon the pergola at Vescovana, photographs of 
a very primitive order, prints and MS. and poems. 
Amongst them was a packet of the Contessa's own 
letters, written in a strong and very remarkable 
hand. The pen which wrote them was rather 
more or a weapon than a friend — it was a sharp, 
incisive tool, used to convey very inadequately the 

^ Periploca groeca. 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 13 

vital thought of its owner. Yet these letters, with 
their perfect simplicity and their marked individu- 
ality, tell the story of the Contessa's later years 
far more effectively than anything I myself could 
say, and I have therefore made some selections from 
them in the following slight sketch of one, whose 
loving and vital presence no mere written words can 
ever bring again. 

For the bare bones of facts in the life ot the 
Contessa I cannot do better than quote the fol- 
lowing short notice which appeared in the Times of 
July I, 1902, a few days after her death : " Evelina, 
Countess Pisani, died on June 25th at her country 
residence near Este, in North Italy. She was the 
daughter of Doctor Julius van Millingen, the phy- 
sician who attended Byron on his deathbed at Misso- 
longhi, and who was known as an antiquary and an 
eminent medical man in Constantinople, where his 
daughter was born in 1830. She was brought up by 
her grandmother, an Englishwoman, in Rome, until 
she was eighteen, when she rejoined her father in 
Constantinople. About 1852 she married Count 
Almoro Pisani, the head of the ancient Venetian 
family of that name, who died some fourteen years 
ago, leaving no issue. Since then Countess Pisani has 
managed his large estates in North Italy. She was a 
staunch friend of England and or English ideas, and 
in her beautiful home she welcomed a large circle of 



14 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 

English friends, who will recall her intellectual gifts 
and great charm of manner. Her brother, Alexander 
van Millingen, is the well-known professor of history, 
in the Robert College at Constantinople." 
• • ■ • • 

The Contessa was very fond of telling stories 
about her youth, and I wish very much that I could 
remember some of these. Of her early childhood, 
and of the period spent in Rome with her English 
grandmother, she had many delightful tales. Her 
education was pretty severe, and she attended the 
Convent of the Sacre Coeur as a day scholar. 

The most passionate affection of her youth was 
centred on her father — the English doctor in Con- 
stantinople ; and for her two brothers — Alexander, 
the professor who constantly visited her in later 
days at Vescovana, and Charles, a physician, she 
ever felt the deepest affection. But the circum- 
stances of her life had cut her off almost com- 
pletely from her family at the period when I 
myself knew her. 

The Roman days passed, and as a girl of eighteen 
she returned for a time to live with her father at Con- 
stantinople. Some years later she was invited by a 
friend to visit her in Venice and to see something 
of Venetian society. She has often told me of 
that time, and how, on the night of her arrival, 
she was taken to the opera, wearing the wonderful 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 15 

Eastern dress which, in the days of Lord Byron, 
was at once curious and the height of fashion. 
Her beauty and her intelligence made a great im- 
pression on the Venetians. A short time afterwards 
she was married to Count Almoro Pisani, the last 
of his name, in the church of St. Mark at 
Venice. 

The doors of Venetian society were at once open 
to Evelina Pisani, and I think that for a time she 
frequented it. But a merely social life of this 
particular type — Venetian society was in no ways 
intellectual at that period — could not satisfy her ardent 
and inquiring spirit, and she found that the large 
spaces and repose of the old farmhouse upon the 
mainland suited better with her deeper tastes ; her 
husband also preferred that life, and more and more 
they lived at Vescovana, the young wife spending 
ever longer periods among her books and flowers, 
for neighbours practically did not exist. She had a 
pair of ponies, and drove herself constantly across the 
plain and into the Euganean hills, which she thus 
learned to know intimately. No children were born 
of the marriage, and in those days she took very little 
personal part in the management of the property. 
Her energies were therefore devoted to the house and 
garden, with the results described in Chapter II. of 
this book. It was probably in those days of com- 
parative leisure that she accumulated her deep know- 



1 6 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 

ledge of Italian, English, French, and other literatures. 
She has often described to me the immense length of 
the days, and the yards of embroidery with which 
she filled the gaps. In summer she and her husband 
would go to the Alps, as so many Italian families do, 
staying at St. Moritz or at Pontresina ; and here she 
acquired that love for mountain flowers which in 
later years led to the construction of the '* Mockery," 
or rock garden of the Lombard Plain. In winter 
they would occasionally go to Venice and live awhile 
in their apartments in the Palazzo Barbaro. But 
they always returned to the tarm, and to its long and 
splendid isolation. 

It was perhaps a curious life for a beautiful and 
highly accomplished woman of the world, but women 
of great intellect often, in lives of this sort, develop 
inherent powers — powers which would in all prob- 
ability have been dwarfed in drawing-rooms. The 
fashion of ladies writing garden-books had not yet 
dawned, but I have always dimly felt that the Con- 
tessa was one of the unconscious godmothers of that 
peculiar form of literature. 

When I came to know her, the struggle with 
circumstance — for a struggle there must always be 
when strong characters are forced into distinct and 
foreign moulds — was over. She had found her 
plateau in life. With the natural elements of that 
plateau she had of course to war : ''''Chi ha Urra 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 17 

ha guerra " was a favourite maxim of hers. Who 
cannot in bitterness repeat it, even if his " terra " 
consist of a suburban square ; and hers were 
3,000 acres of cultivated land with the accompani- 
ment of Italian peasants, Italian bailiffs, and Italian 
government. She was partly English, and many 
of her instincts were English ; but she had French 
blood too, and her extraordinarily fertile brain was 
open to a hundred cosmopolitan ideas. I think that 
this was what made her so passionatelyy^j/. She was 
free of national prejudices. She loved righteousness 
for righteousness' sake. She loved Italy with that 
almost despairing love which all her lovers have 
shared, and she was fevered by her sorrows and per- 
plexities. She was proud of the great Venetian name 
she bore : " You know I am devoted to the Pisanis," 
she writes. " I live under their roof, as the peasants 
say ; whatever I enjoy belonged to them, and it seems 
to me as if I could never thank them enough or 
praise them as they deserve." ^ 

We most of us, I suppose, live double lives — 
those of the spirit and those of facts — and as we 
grow older we learn, I think, more and more how 
the best of these with very many people is the 
hidden life. It is certain that the public (burying 
perhaps its own better part and appearing in the 

* For an account of this great Venetian family, see Chapter I. 
of this book. 



1 8 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 

guise of a gossip), is often the unsympathetic spec- 
tator, rather than the intuitive friend. The public, 
in the case of Countess Pisani, noticed a powerful 
lady driving, with the utmost regularity, from farm 
to farm in her carriage, and finding a great many 
obvious faults with their management. It was 
perhaps impossible that they should see the loving, 
the deeply intellectual and sympathetic woman's 
heart, which beat so passionately for the good of 
the land, at the back of all this outward formality. 

" Chi ha terra ha guerra^ " It is a daily struggle 
and a conflict," she writes. *' It is not easy to do 
one's duty. Each in his own corner has many diffi- 
culties. The great thing is to do it bravely, and 
God, in His mercy and goodness, gave you and me 
such gifts that we cannot complain, but must use 
them to the greatest advantage of those who live 
together with ourselves in life.' 

She had difficult clay to work upon. She pro- 
duced a fine model, but at an incalculable expense of 
spirit. The Italian peasant in Central Italy is often 
refined and highly intelligent. In the Padovana, he 
is of a coarser and heavier mould, and his mind has 
been warped by centuries of apparently fruitless 
labour and an old tradition of serfdom. " How 
difficult it is to understand the peasants ! " she writes 
in one letter. ** They reason like children, and when 
you are kind to them they act like spoilt children. 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 19 

I wish you had been present at an interview that I 
had this morning with the Sindaco of Stanghella 
and the Brigadiere di Carabinieri. They agreed 
with me, and confessed that they found it very 
puzzling." 

In her work for the improvement of the land 
and of human life, she got but little, and that most 
unintelligent, help from the local authorities. The 
keeping of the public road was, at Vescovana, even 
as it is sometimes in an English village, no great 
advertisement of parish government. On a January 
day we read : "I went out to-day for the first 
time in the little carriage, but could not go very 
far, the road being one large piece of ice, and the 
Village Commune won't do anything to prevent 
men, women, cattle and horses, from breaking their 
necks. It makes me wretched. One of the 
big people of the Municipality broke his leg 
this morning, and we are told the orders were 
given to have a 'little sand thrown on the road 
next week ! ' *' . . . Again, in March : *' I went out 
early this morning visiting the stables, and was 
distressed, as usual, to see the fields of beautiful 
wheat covered with water ; there is so much mis- 
management rrom want of the right knowledge. 
When you think that Italy could be one of the 
richest countries in the world, it really makes you 
miserable to see such loss for want of proper 



20 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 

understanding. ^h^ Italia far a da se^ and we can 
see what use they make of it." Here is more on 
the same topic, with an amusing account of a local 
lawsuit: "Italy will always be the same, private 
quarrels becoming of general interest. Guelph and 
Ghibiline are revived at any moment. We have had 
ourselves a fight, and eighteen men, armed with 
knives and spades and pitchforks, who assailed my 
party, dispersed them and destroyed the battle- 
ments (a hedge), and took possession of the land. 
High words passed on both sides. I was not 
present, but the chief of the opposite party was 
on the spot, and threatened death ! * Dirai alia 
Contessa che^ Vuno o Valtro deve morire sul posto ! ' 
This message was faithfully delivered to me with 
a glee in the eye of my men, and I went to law, 
not feeling strong enough to be either a Gremio 
or a Lambertazzo. The case was brought before 
the Prefettura di Monselice, and all the * bravi ' of 
the neighbourhood were called by my opponent as 
witnesses. Such black beards and ferocious faces 
you never saw but in the Middle Ages ! It was 
nothing but a show to intimidate. I am sure the 
beards were made of black cloth, and the eyes were 
bits of charcoal. I had also forty witnesses, but 
they all looked like blue baboons, and trembled in 
the most disgraceful manner ! There were also three 
lawyers to defend me — a Christian, a Jew, and a 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 21 

Heathen. . . ." In a time of drought and strike, 
she writes : *' I have had all kinds of difficulties 
in the farms ; this dreadful drought deprives 
my beautiful oxen of every comfort. We have no 
straw for their beds, hardly any hay for their food, 
and no green grass. I rush from one stable to the 
other in a wild state of excitement, storming right 
and left. Friends left me in the midst of what I 
call a strike. The harvesters refused to go to work 
(not one man of last year came). We have come to 
an agreement, and to-day, being Sunday, those who 
consent to work are invited to a meeting under my 
barchesse'' ^ 

But her dealings with the land and its inhabitants 
were by no means those of a perpetual hurricane. 
There were calm moments — moments of blessed rest 
and thankfulness. I think I must quote in full one 
Christmas letter, which shows her in her quiet life 
at home : — 

Jan. 6, 1889. "I thought of you to-day more 
than usual, and I am sure you would have enjoyed 
to see all the children of the village who came 
to get the Strega under the arcades. Poor little 
things ! I did not give them much, and yet they 
were made very happy with oranges, cakes, and 
* rosolio ' (a sweet red wine made up of roses). 
They all screamed at the tops of their voices, and it 

* Arcades, 



22 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 

was with great difficulty that their parents succeeded 
in persuading them, when it was almost dark, that it 
was time to go home. Even the dogs were merry, 
and I have an idea that many a cake was stolen by 
those dreadful brutes who are never tired of eating.** 
(The Contessa was devoted to her big Maremma 
dogs, whose beauties and whose vices she loved to 
dwell upon.) '^The day was most beautiful, and 
the sky as pure and intensely blue as it is in 
the Engadine. ... I ought to have answered your 
last letter and told you how happy it made me, 
and how glad to get an insight of your father's 
study. When I feel cold (it sometimes happens in 
this big room), I dream of his big stove made of 
green serpentine ; ' Je vols cela d'ici et je niy 
chauffe,' Do tell me how you passed your Christ- 
mas. . . . My own was very solitary. I put a 
few bunches of holly round the house, and had a 
real plum-pudding for myself and servants. On 
the whole, I think I enjoyed myself — ^les lieux ont 
une dme^ and the soul of Vescovana has always 
inspired me to thankfulness. There is something 
soothing in these old walls, and I love them. . . . 
I hope you received your angels, and that you were 
pleased with them. Fra Angelico ! — What a lovely 
creature he was ? Such as your father would fancy, 
with a Roman Catholic Church as bodiless as his 
angels." 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 23 

It is no easy matter to manage a schoolroom full 
of strong and overbearing young people, but often 
it happens that in the same house, up in the nursery, 
the most fascinating creatures of this earth live their 
enchanted lives, and fill the heart of the weary 
governess with joy and with refreshment. To the 
Contessa, the peasants, the bailiffs, the Members of 
the Municipio, were the schoolroom, but the ^^hovV 
were her babies. How she loved them. What 
soothing certain joy their presence brought her. 
Sometimes I have thought this almost weirdly 
powerful love was explained by a pile of little caps 
and camisoles which had never been used, and 
which, with limp and faded laces, lay in the big 
linen presses of the '* Farm." All through her 
letters runs the tale of the cattle's praises — the 
spirit relaxes, the words flow out, easy and placid : — 

" Hinc albi, Clitumne, greges et maxima taurus 
Victima, saspe tuo perfusi flumine sacro, 
Romanes ad templa deum duxere triumphos. 

Don't you see my Magnifico } Ah ! Virgil was a 
Gromboolian ! " 

The naming of the oxen was a constant source of 
pleasure and excitement. In the second letter which 
she wrote to me, she says : " I must not conclude 
my letter without giving you every good news of 
my cattle. There were many births and no deaths 



24 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 

lately. We have now a Sarpio (for Fra Paolo), 
Steno, Reale, and last, but not least, Farnesina — a 
perfect beauty, daughter of Farnese and Parma. 
Many that you left in idle thoughtlessness have 
taken to working very hard, and do their duty very 
bravely. When you come again I must introduce 
you to ' Oca ' and * Strindola.' They are remark- 
able for their intelligence, and so amusing in their 
ways. . . . There was a case of sudden death. 
Poor Francese died while he was ploughing, and I 
feel his loss. Such a beautiful hove cannot be easily 
replaced.** 

After her love for her oxen came her love for the 
garden. This last was perhaps the earlier love, and 
she certainly never lost it, though the love for her 
cattle held the stronger fibres of her heart in later 
years. The garden was a toy — a delightful play- 
thing. It was well that it meant nothing more 
serious, for infinite were the trials and disappoint- 
ments of the gardener in that sun-baked plain, 
exposed to a continual succession of drought and 
flood and ice, according to the season — a climate in 
which such a luxury as an English lawn had better 
be put into one's bag of dreams from the very 
outset. Still the garden v/as there, and an exquisite 
one of its kind, and when man proved himself 
at times vile and unworthy, it was to the garden 
that her thoughts were ever turned. " I assure you. 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 25 

my dear , that when I have discussed for some 

time with these men " (this refers to a dispute with 
her bailiffs) ''I am perfectly exhausted — I cannot 
write nor read, and I go round the garden to 
gather new thoughts and new strength." 

It was while 'Agoing round the garden gathering 
strength'* that I first really learned to know her, for 
I too gardened in the regions of my mind, and at 
first it was the only subject I ventured to discuss 
with this wonderful lady. That is where I see her 
best in memory, after twenty years, her splendid 
skirts, for she was always a joy to look at, gathered 
on her arm as she went slowly, stooping lovingly, 
from bed to rock, from bush to bower. She never 
did much manual work herself, although she loved 
to imagine it : ''I have at last begun my rock garden, 
and wish your mother were here to help me. We 
would have our hands in mud all the day long and 
feel so happy ! " In another place, she writes : " If 
we are all flooded here on the plain, I come up 
to Davos to help your mother with her Alpine 
Garden." 

At last we are told that the famous rock garden is 
completed : " It looks as if nothing will grow — a 
large Mockery all over ! " And then the fountain, 
dedicated to me, is put up. It came from Milan — 
a beautiful marble shell, with a dolphin from which 
the water ran: "No one is allowed to wash their 



26 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 

hands in your fountain before you come yourself, 
and if A. attempts to do so, he will have his hands 
chopped off on the spot ! " But there was not much 
time for washing hands. Big boards had to be pre- 
pared with the words ** Mockery" and "Walls of 
Baal " printed upon them, so that there could be 
no mistake. We ransacked the hills for roots, 
we brought back from the Alps every description 
of campanula and saxifrage. Great bushes of 
rhubarb and splendid flags flourished and spread, 
but the frailer flowers, with scarcely an exception, 
withered away. One great southern squill sur- 
vived and blossomed nobly. ''The beautiful Scilla 
Maritima you brought to me from Leucaspide 
came out the other day on the ruins of the 
temple of Baal. It is the loveliest thing you can 
imagine — tall, slender, and such a spike of white 
and delicate flowers." There was something glorious, 
because half preposterous in the ''Mockery" : "The 
Empress (of Germany) was delighted with the 
Mockery. I had to explain it to her, and I 
have an idea she is going to have an opposition 
'Mockery.'" 

Perhaps the winter on that Paduan plain was her 
worst enemy, with its long fogs and intense cold. 
The winter of 1891 was cruel in Northern Italy. 
She excuses her long silence : " The fact is, I have 
little to say to make my letters pleasant. I could 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 27 

speak of nothing but of the dreadful weather we 
have had lately, and of the mountains of snow I see 
from my windows both on the side of the public 
road as well as that of the garden. Poor babies ! " 
(her bulbs), " I must try to forget them, and write 
to Barr to send me bulbs and roots again/* A little 
later, however, we get better news : *' We went out 
early in the rain and took the few flowers that have 
come out : squills, dog-tooth violets and iris stylosa 
and reticulata are lovely all at present. The rest 
have suffered very much. The violets are just 
beginning. I envy Mother's window garden. My 
daffodils are very poor, only a few Bicolor which 

gave me. They are very large and beautiful, 

like everything that comes from Barr.'' 

Mr. Barr, I may say, was the prophet of this 
Italian garden. " Dear, dear, dear Barr," she writes, 
when in the exalted throes of creating her formal 
garden — called, after one in Mr. Blomfield's book, 
Crispin de Pass. '' Barr has sent me no end of 
bulbs, and for two days I have not been out of the 
garden. I have left stables and maize, your letters 
and everything else unfinished. How may we 
adorn dear Crispin de Pass ! How we look forward 
to the time when he will surpass even the garden ot 
S." (a hated rival on the plain) — " is more than I 
can tell ! " 

Sad days came in harvest-time when, more than at 



2 8 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 

any other season, the new plants required water. 
'*The gleaners'' (an army of peasant girls who 
habitually weeded and watered in the garden), — " the 
gleaners go on in the most marvellous manner — they 
get so excited in the fields that they even refuse to 
come to the garden. They seem indifferent to the 
beauties of Crispin de Pass." 

• • • • • 

So far I have spoken only of the outward facts 
and work in the life of this remarkable woman, 
whom a mere chance had placed so early in her life 
in a remote, neglected, and by no means artistically 
beautiful region of Northern Italy. I wish to pass 
on to her friendships, which were an integral part in 
her life. But it may be as well to review her 
position first. 

Countess Pisani loved beauty, she loved art and 
refinement, and the intercourse of mind. Every- 
thing in the whole of her being drew her in those 
directions. But destiny, or duty, decided that the 
greater part of her existence should be passed in a 
huge plain redeemed from sterility only by its accu- 
mulations of centuries ot mud. This puts the case 
nakedly, and the pages of the following book will 
not really refute the statement, for there may be halos 
about the most uncompromising faces. She lived on 
a great mud plateau between two dangerous rivers 
which threatened continual destruction (see p. 251). 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 29 

She lived among a race of people who could no more 
understand her than they could alter the courses 
of the stars. She had a large intellect, and she 
grasped the fact that by ceaseless vigilance and 
cultivation the mud-bank could yield a splendid 
store of crops, and its people and its animals could 
enjoy, instead of merely enduring, a life of compara- 
tive happiness and plenty. She made it her business 
to insure these facts ; and she succeeded. She had 
a splendid vivid spirit, and she never for a day 
allowed the flame to flicker ; but there must have 
been moments, in her early widowhood anyhow, 
when only some intense feeling of loyalty could have 
held her to her post. She was a woman absolutely 
alone. She might well have sat upon a throne, for 
she had a genuine capacity for rule, and I never 
knew her waver when once her judgment was 
convinced. She admitted no compromise. Some 
may have said that there was more of the tyrant 
than of the diplomat in her ; but this was what made 
her great. She had inborn convictions about breeding 
and race, and the superiority of mind over matter. 

Unlike some labourers, she actually lived to see 
the fruits of her vineyard. The beautiful order of 
her farms, the neatness of her roads, the Eastern 
splendour within the walls of what, after all, was just 
a huge farmhouse ; the general healthy and cleanly 
look of her peasants, and the surpassing beauty of 



30 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 

her cattle — all these things had become proverbs in 
the surrounding country before her death. But 
before passing to her outside interests, there is one 
point on which I must touch, and without which the 
courage of her life could not actually be understood. 
The just man is not necessarily popular or beloved 
in his day, however much his works may live 
after him. I think that most of the women, and 
many of her farmers honoured and respected her ; 
but she always, even in the heat ot summer, drove 
about her property in a shut carriage. At the head 
of her bed, and just within reach of her hand, a 
loaded pistol, polished and ready, invariably hung. 
This weapon, which meant so much in that coura- 
geous life, caused in my young democratic (and very 
ignorant) days, an indescribable revolt. As I sat by 
her bedside in the early morning, talking quietly 
with my friend — the doves and all those birds she 
loved cooing and twittering at her window, and the 
scent of the hidden garden beyond blown in over the 
pergola — I always tried to see her face without 
the weapon up above it, for it was, if I may say so, 
the pin in the porridge of my love for her. In later 
years I have been able to understand more whole- 
heartedly the courage of that noble life of an 
intellectual, sensitive, and loving woman, set in such 
an alien solitude and all the struggle that it must 
have meant for her. 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 31 

I have spoken of her as living her life alone, but I 
would wish to mention here the name of that faithful 
friend and guardian of her interests — the parish 
priest, Don Antonio, whose ceaseless care and vigi- 
lance saved her at very many points from what would 
otherwise have been the unendurable strain of a 
solitary rule. Perhaps he did not take much part in 
the personal management of the property, but he 
kept the accounts — every document passed through 
his hands — he interceded for the poor, and gave 
interest to her leisure hours by his own remark- 
ably wide intellectual interests. " Without Don 
Antonio," writes one who knew and loved her 
best, '' 1 do not see how she could have held her 
ground amongst a population such as that she had 
to deal with." 

Many people who live much alone become sus- 
picious and morose. She, on the contrary, never 
lost her power of forming new friendships. *' I 

knew at once," she writes, " but I have an eye 

that looks into the souls of those I love, and besides, 
I am an old woman, accustomed to study those with 
whom I come in contact." Of her strong, intuitive 
love for her friends, and notably for high-minded 
and therefore sometimes misrepresented women, 
touches occur again and again. They are too 
personal for publication, and yet with their burn- 



32 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 

ing declamation against the envy and meanness ot 
detraction, they might profit any public. Beautiful 
herself, she loved beauty in others. In her many 
wonderful recollections, I can remember nothing 
more vivid or delightful than her accounts of the 
beautiful women she had known. " I wish people 
would admire other people without feeling envious," 
she cries. 

It was no easy matter to fit in her friends with 
the daily round of her duties. She loved nothing 
better than to fill her big house with parties of 
friends, but the arrears of work to which she re- 
turned when the guests had departed were formid- 
able. " I found out at last after sixty years that 
I must be left alone to be able to fulfil my duties. 
I get so excited when friends are staying with me 
that I do nothing but rush after them." . . . *' I 
am always busy," she writes in another letter, " and 
my days are made very short for many reasons. I 
must rise very late, go to bed very early, get some 
rest in the middle of the day, and what time remains 
I have to give orders for the house, attend to 
business of various kinds and find moments for a 
little reading. I envy those who are able to do 
more and make their life more useful to others. 
I never was very strong, but of late years I begin 
to feel * // 'peso degli anni^ and nothing but heart 
and soul is young in me. I suppose that this 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 33 

feeling of old age coming on makes me cling more 
than ever to young people." Speaking of an old 

lady friend she says : " Dear has found her 

way back to A., and I hope she enjoys her garden. 
It strikes me that she prefers roaming about to 
remaining quietly at home. I myself have always 
wished to have a large arm-chair for my old age, 
and to sit like a picture with plenty of young 
people round me." It is perhaps not necessary 
to say that all young people loved her in return. 
Almost unconsciously she taught them a hundred 
truths. If herself a little embittered at certain 
points by the spectacle of human weakness and 
lack of truth, she touched on this topic only lightly 
with her girl friends, and told them rather of all the 
possibilities of splendour in their lives. " I think 
it is good for girls of your age to have a friend 
much older than themselves. We can discuss many 
things together, and I give you a little of my 
experience which has brought me to love every- 
thing that is beautiful and taught me how much 
good is in the world." And she loved, with a sort 
of humble reverence, the goodness and purity of 
young people. Speaking of a young English girl, 
who certainly was above the common mould, and 
who possessed, combined with rare beauty, a sort 
of mediaeval candour of soul, she says : " I never 
before wished for a sister, but I now see what a 

3 



34 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 

blessing one can be — a long source of happiness 

all through life. I felt, when was with me, that 

her influence was of the best. She has done me 
more good than many books. How much a woman, 
however young, can do when she is thoroughly 
good and sweet ! I do not think she was aware 
of the many lessons she gave me — sometimes it 
was merely a look.'* It was a great pleasure to give 
her presents — she so delighted in even the most 
trifling off^ering. " I think you are all too good to 
me," she writes, after the receipt of various roots, 
pictures, and curious oddments, " and I am trying 
to think what I can do for you. I wish I were 
not so old, stupid and ignorant, but I cannot help 
it. I feel as though I were not up to the mark, 
and I vainly try to improve. Of course, old age 
and stupidity cannot be mended, but we could do 
something to lessen the dose of ignorance." Whereat 
she sets forth on a whole host of new studies, and 
re-reads Homer and buries herself in her beloved 
Machiavelli and Virgil. This haunting sense of 
mental incapacity, which I think often accompanies 
brain power with women whose lives are necessarily 
crowded with practical detail, is continually men- 
tioned with comic lamentations. Speaking of the 
Georgics, she says : " I enjoy them so much, and 
yet I do not know a word of Latin (!). Some 
one hundred and fifty years ago I took some 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 35 

lessons from a certain priest. He gave me up 
in despair. The fact is all my masters got 
tired of me ; they found me too stupid. That 
accounts for my extreme ignorance and incapacity 
for doing anything well. I am sure you have heard 
of, or even may have seen, women who are what the 
French call ' une belle laide^ Well, there are also 
persons of my sort who one might call * une stupide 
intelligente' This used to make me miserable, but 
now I get reconciled to my lot, and feel very 
thankful that I can enjoy the intelligence of other 
people." 

• . • • • 

She simply adored masquerade, and she had a sort 
of passion for " dressing up." I shall never forget 
a cold April night, when the desire to see us 
" dressed " at any cost came up and overpowered 
her. My father was expected by a late train 
from Venice. My eldest sister and I put on our 
accustomed evening gowns, and appeared as usual 
in the drawing-room. ** This cannot be," cried the 
Contessa, herself in splendid brocade, and she 
swept us to her own apartments. All the candles 
had to be relighted on the dressing-table. I think 
there were "clusters" of candles when the Contessa's 
toilette was in progress. The bewildered lady's- 
maid ransacked the cupboards and the drawers. 
Glorious headgear, entangled fichus, gauze Turkish 



36 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 

bodices and beads were lavishly overhauled. Our 
hair was pulled down and repinned up with the 
most amazing hair-pins. Glancing about me 
nervously and in decided discomfort, I thought 
that I detected an expression of amazed uncertainty 
on the face of the well- trained handmaiden. My 
father arrived — we got through the dinner. He 
was tired, and his head, I suppose, was full of some 
new scheme for work. The evening wore on, the 
Contessa could contain herself no longer, she was so 
gloriously happy in her transformations. " Well ! " 
she cried, " and what do you think of your 
daughters ? " My father glanced at us — " I had 
been thinking they looked rather untidy," he said. 



Yes, they were gay days that young people spent 
under the roof of the Doge's Farm ! But she did 
not only see her friends at Vescovana ; she some- 
times went to stay in her town house at Venice, 
taking with her all her country retinue. Then the 
beautiful rooms on the 'piano nohile of the Palazzo 
Barbaro were opened up. They were typical 
Venetian rooms with long rows of Gothic windows 
to the drawing-room, and tiny white lions guarding 
the balconies. Their chief adornment was a great 
family portrait of Almoro II. and his family painted 
by Pietro Longhi. The town house was fitted up 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 37 

perhaps more sumptuously than that in the country, 
but it had the same pervading and individual charm. 
There were lots of mirrors and a little fountain in 
the drawing-room. She always arrived with a pile 
of wooden boxes full of flowers, and after she had 
been there an hour the place looked like a bower. 
In October, 1889, she writes from her Venetian 
home : " I came here a week ago, summoned by 
telegram from Lady Layard. The day of my 
arrival I dined with Lord S. and Captain L., of the 
Osborne^ and many others of the suite of the Prince 
and Princess of Wales. Such a contrast with the 
rustics of Vescovana, and their wild manners ! I 
was invited to luncheon (at Lady Layard's) with 
the Royal party, and sat next to Prince George, 
who insisted on the necessity of my going to 
England. I was allowed to present to the Princess 
a Venetian Zecchino (Doge Pisani's). She looked 
pleased, and thanked me in such an unaffected, girlish 
way that quite took my heart. I had not seen the 
Prince since he was nineteen, and we remembered 
together Rome and the ' Moccoletti.' " 

She loved to fill her house with guests. She 
loved to exchange the myriads of thoughts accu- 
mulated through the long weeks and months and 
years of her own isolated life, with men and women 
whose existence was passed amongst their equals in 
the busy world of cities. 



38 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 

Friends who loved the Contessa have asked that 
in this little sketch I should try to give some 
account of her curiously versatile conversation. 
But, alas ! there is nothing which it is more im- 
possible to reproduce than the talk of cultivated 
people. It is far more easy to render the slow and 
painful words of peasants, though even this, as often 
as not, produces a mere parody. The Contessa's 
words are passed — they are gone, and we may not 
recall them. We can only say that she combined 
the intuitions of a woman with a virile power of 
reasoning, and that she would hold her own with 
any brilliant talker or group of talkers. Men de- 
lighted in her quick wit, realising that it was no 
mere outward tinsel, but covered a profound and 
steady source of knowledge, the product of much 
study and incessant thinking. Life had shown her 
many lessons, books perhaps had taught her even 
more. She looked on eagerly at the human pageant, 
read papers, magazines, and all new books of in- 
terest. She looked on. She was a woman of the 
world, but her " life of the world '* was a life lived 
only in imagination, lived by hearsay, not by con- 
tact. She was a strong Catholic, and more and 
more she leant on the Church for her support. She 
brought a keen, if perhaps too conservative, a judg- 
ment to bear upon the politics of nations, and she 
drew conclusions which she had had ample leisure to 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 39 

balance carefully. She passionately loved united 
Italy, and desired her welfare. How much one 
wishes that she might have lived to realise her pre- 
sent comparative advance and prosperity ! 

The strong active brain, the eager and deeply 
affectionate spirit could not rest. Was it wasted 
there in that remote farm-villa on the plains } , . , 
Would we, who loved her, have had it trained on 
Boards and in Committee-rooms, and a tangle of 
so-called philanthropy and ** causes ".?...! think 
we may answer No. The Contessa was fitted to 
her place. Like a rare jewel set in a single band 
of iron, she stands alone in memory. The flurry 
and fuss, and self-importance, of many women in 
small provincial towns and villages, were alien to her 
nature, and would indeed, had she adopted them, 
have spoiled her great and curious qualities. 

The Contessa was fitted to her place ; and the 
little circle of friends who gathered round her table 
at rare intervals gained a unique, refreshing, and 
delightful human experience such as is accorded to 
few in a lifetime. 

• • • • « 

I think that quite one of the most attractive points 
which draws imaginative young people to persons of 
an older generation is their link with what must 
always seem at least to be a more splendid past than 
their own present. The old age of giants dies out 



40 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 

before the growing one has a chance to develop, and 
so we always believe that the generation before our 
own was one of greatness, compared to which we 
ourselves are paltry pigmies. It is possible, of course, 
that the generation which grew up in the first part 
of the nineteenth century was an exceptional one — 
people had the '* great manner " then — persons 
had the almost extinct noun, " presence." The 
Contessa's experience was a long one, and her 
memory travelled back to the great social days of 
Byron in Italy ; when people did nothing by halves, 
but sat in their carriages when they crossed the 
Channel, and trundled in these same chariots 
through the gates of Rome. Italian society, too, 
was different then — duller probably, but grander 
in its exclusive isolation. There was something 
which savoured strongly of the '^ grand manner " 
about the Contessa's early reminiscences. She was 
a wonderful raconteusey and no letters and no amount 
of descriptive writing can ever bring back her stories 
and her curious and shrewd judgments. 

She sat sometimes in her old Lombard house 
amidst the lonely plains, and looked back into the 
past with some stray traveller who still frequented 
the ruins of that world from which she herself was 
withdrawn some forty years ago : " The Marchese 
G. stayed with me some days, and we had long 
conversations about our Roman friends. It is so 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 41 

sad for me to hear that one after the other they all 
are ruined. I have always been a great friend of the 
Borgheses, and the present prince is a particular 
friend of mine. I am afraid they are going to sell 
the palace, the villa, and their most splendid gallery 
of pictures. The Rome of my youth is disappear- 
ing, and I mourn over it.'* She fitted on to all that 
was best in the existing Venetian society. " Countess 
M. is also dead. She was comparatively a young 
woman — only fifty-two — and still very beautiful 
and full of life. Her funeral, I am told, was 
something splendid — such flowers as are rarely seen 
in Venice. . . . 

" * Full canisters or fragrant lilies bring, 
Mixed with the purple roses of the spring.* 

— You see 1 am still reading Virgil.'* 

• • • • • 

I have described her love for her actual friends, 
but she possessed, too, a curious faculty for visual- 
ising and actually loving people she had never seen, 
and some of whom were dead. She could enter with 
a sort of intuitive instinct into their lives. For my 
mother's sister. Miss Marianne North, the traveller, 
whom, unfortunately, she never met, she conceived 
one of these sincere affections, and throughout the 
letters there are many allusions to her, and laments 
that she cannot assist in the construction of the 



42 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 

garden. " On All Soul's Day, I remembered dear 
Aunt Pop, and prayed for her. I must have a part 
of my garden consecrated to her. I hope there will 
be beautiful flowers in heaven. The Turks say 
that to plant a flower is to do an action pleasing to 
God. How many thousands of good actions has 
your dear Aunt done in her life ! " 

• • • • • 

On June 25, 1902, the Contessa passed from 
this life. Her illness was very sudden. It fell on a 
Sunday night ; in the following dawn she died. It 
was just in the height of the harvest season. Did 
she hear, as she passed, the long, low call of the 
reapers — that cry which had always reminded her 
of the '* Muezzin" or call to prayer from the mosques 
in her Eastern home } One likes to think that she 
heard it ; and men rise early in harvest-time. Her 
nature was spiritual, and her religious faith had long 
been drawing her into wider fields than those which 
on this earth she had so wisely tended. There was 
nothing to dread ; no languor and no possibility of 
fear in her passing. One friend was with her — he 
who in life had been the careful keeper of her 
interests ; otherwise she was alone. *' No relation 
stood beside her at the last,'* writes the brother 
whom she so much loved. " There was no time for 
me to get to her funeral. It is sad, but there was so 
much loneliness and independence in her life at 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 43 

Vescovana that a lonely death may seem in keeping 
with what went before." 

They buried her beside her husband in the chapel 
at the end of the garden which she had planned and 
planted, and where she had loved every leaf and bud. 

*' Chi ha terra ha guerraj' She was tired like all 
hard workers, and people who, " unable to shatter 
this world to bits," at least " remould it closer to 
the heart's desire/* 

• • • • • 

This is a translation of the Latin inscription 
written on her grave : — 

" Here sleeps Evelina, Countess Pisani, widow of 
Almoro Pisani, whose life may be summed up in 
these short words, which she herself desired should 
be carved here : 

" Behold, I have loved justice and hated iniquity." 



MARGARET VAUGHAN. 



GiGGLEswicK, Yorkshire, 
February 18, 1908. 



PREFACE 

IT was under my father's influence and with his 
^ help that this small book was written. Living 
for awhile a life apart from his, I always thought 
of him, and for him I chronicled the things I saw 
and did. When I came home we read those 
chronicles together, laughing at the crudities which 
he forgave. He promised to write an Introduction 
for the book, which would have brought it more 
together and given it a point by showing the his- 
torical interest of the country which I, through 
ignorance, have only superficially described ; and, 
chiefly, he meant to dwell on Virgil's connection 
with the Lombard scenes. 

My father and I were on our way to Vescovana, 
where he hoped to write this Preface, when he fell 
ill. In Rome he died. The writing seems to me 
now incomplete — a thing with the spirit gone out 
of it. But my father's marks are over all the 
manuscript ; and because he liked the book, because 
he took an interest in it and wanted me to print 

45 



46 PREFACE 

it, I do so now, and give it back to him, the 
strength of whose love and influence it was which 
taught me since childhood to love and understand 
a little, not only the charm of a Doge's Farm, 
but of the whole and living world. 

MARGARET SYMONDS. 
Davos Platz, Jul^j 3, 1893. 



\ 



m':> 





LAMPS OF THE PISANI ADMIRAL. 



INTRODUCTION 



A LL travellers beyond the Alps are well 



/\ 



acquainted with the plain of Lombardy — that 



immense body of land lying like a prostrate giant 
over Northern Italy. The giant's head is crowned 
by Apennines and Alps, his feet are bathed by the 
Adriatic, and down his entire length run the rivers 
Ticino, Adige, and Po. That which I have called 
the giant — what is generally known as the Lombard 
Plain — is really a broad valley scooped out ages ago 
by those three great Alpine rivers. Many of its 
northern cities are familiar to the tourist, and it is 
certain that even the most hurried traveller pushes 
eastward to Venice. But the part which I describe 
is all unknown to the inquiring stranger. It offers 



47 



48 INTRODUCTION 

few attractions to the student of art or of history. 
The painter hitherto has shown no desire to put its 
charms on canvas. Quietly and unobserved Hfe passes 
there. Virgil, it is true, observed it long ago. The 
Georgics are immortal, but the land which gave them 
birth is little trodden by their readers. And there 
the seed is sown, the corn is reaped, the grain 
gathered into the granaries, while the daily trains 
rush past to Bologna, Mantua, Venice, or Ferrara ; 
none of their multitudes descend upon those flat and 
cultivated fields which offer scant diversion to the 
lover of art or the seekers after pleasure. The 
actual interest of this country will be acknowledged 
by the agriculturist alone ; its attraction only by one 
who has abundant leisure, and takes delight in every 
side of Nature and in the workings of man amongst 
them. 

The actual part of the country which I have 
attempted to describe goes in the maps by the name 
of Bassa Padovana. It is that sea of fertile land, 
bounded by the Euganean Hills and the Adriatic, 
which Shelley has described so wonderfully well. 
Lombardy comes up to meet it ; Venetia and 
Padua claim it for their own. It has a charm which 
is peculiar to itself — a green, grey melancholy ; an 
absolute and endless calm. Even in storms you 
feel an infinite space of heaven around the bit ot 
sky where the hubbub rages ; and when that whole 



INTRODUCTION 49 

sky is a serene blue the sense of accumulated sunshine 
falling unchecked across innumerable miles of un- 
broken fields can boast a solemn beauty all its own. 
Something of this charm may be found in every 
plain, but in this special one the nearness of the 
lagoons increases it, I fancy. 

As I have shown in the first chapter, the country 
is partly artificial — that is to say, it has been culti- 
vated with enormous pains and at great expense for 
over six hundred years. But even now it is yearly 
threatened with destruction. The river Adige 
crosses this smooth plain (which has a fall of only 
seven and a half metres in the space of thirty-four 
miles) before it can reach the sea. The Adige bears 
with it all the waters of the distant Alps, and deposits 
in its slow progress all those vast accumulations of 
mountain sediment which in due time pile up an 
artificial mountain in the actual bed of the river 
which brought them. Thus the very cause of the 
land*s fertility (its abundant water supply) may 
prove its ruin ; and not all the intricate system of 
canals and ditches can save those flourishing fields 
on the day when the big river breaks its banks. 
These banks are calculated to inspire something like 
panic in the mind of the most ignorant observer. 
They rise to a height of from twenty-six to twenty- 
nine feet above the level of the land, and the church- 
spires and houses which once commanded now are 

4 



50 INTRODUCTION 

shadowed by these mountainous dykes. Standing 
on their summit, you see the entire plain for 
miles spread like a map below you. Interminable 
fields of corn or maize, stretching between ditches 
hedged by mulberry and willow, with here and 
there a mud hut or a stable, now and then a 
small, thin campanile. In the far background faint 
shadows of the Alps arise, and on the breeze a 
suspicion of salt air is borne from the invisible 
lagoon. 

In the heart of this country, and in the house 
of one of its most active inhabitants — Countess 
Pisani — it has often been my privilege to stay. 
This lady is an admirer of the works of Edward 
Lear, and has bestowed upon her country the name 
of Gromboolia, which hitherto undiscovered land 
is often mentioned in Lear's poems. The title is 
so exactly adapted to the country that I shall not 
scruple to adopt it in the following pages. She has 
also called her house the *' Doge's Farm." For it 
was in Gromboolia that the families of old Venetian 
doges made their land settlements ; and I have shown 
in what manner the Pisani family bought and culti- 
vated a part of it. These nobles spent most of their 
spare money in decorating and living sumptuously 
within their city palaces ; their country house was 
built in a style more suited to their bailiffs. It is 
probable that the Pisani doge never even came to 



INTRODUCTION 51 

Vescovana ; it is certain that he lived long centuries 
after the land had been bought ; at a time, indeed, 
when it was falling into decay together with the 
Republic. I must, therefore, openly acknowledge 
that the title of ** Doge's Farm " was bestowed more 
for the sake of its new and pleasing sound than for 
any historical fitness in the term. 

Also I acknowledge that this small book is half a 
jest. It contains few facts and little history. Letters 
and notes written out of a happy time, I put together 
and give them here. Any local information con- 
tained in the book I owe to the kindness and accurate 
knowledge of my friend. Countess Pisani, who showed 
me the things which I describe, and who also supplied 
me with those photographs of Pisani portraits and 
of local views which have been reproduced in the 
following pages. The remainder of the illustrations 
are from my own sketches. 



NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION 

Some fresh illustrations have been added to the Second 
Edition of this book, but the country described is one of which 
it is practically impossible to obtain satisfactory photographs or 
sketches. The professional photographer never approaches it, 
and the cleverest amateur is baffled by the immensity of the 



52 INTRODUCTION 

horizon and the comparative lack of foreground and of detail. 
Thanks to Mr. Walter Leaf, Professor F. Trombini, and my 
husband, I have, however, been able to gather together a few 
beautiful and typical pictures of the country, the people, and 
the oxen ; and I am happy to be able to acknowledge their 
help in this place. 




HOME OF THE LONG-TAILED TIT. 



CHAPTER I 



RISE OF THE PISANIS AND PURCHASE OF VESCOVANA 



nPHE Pisani family were not of Venetian origin. 
^ We find the following account of them in the 
Libro d'Oro : The family removed about the year 
905 from Pisa to Venice, on account of party feuds, 
and was included in the Patriciate at the closing of 
the Great Council. Luigi Pisani was Doge in 1735 ; 
Francesco and Alvise were Cardinals of the Holy 



53 



54 DAYS SPENT ON 

Church ; and the family reckons a very long series 
of worthy citizens adorned by the most conspicuous 
dignities of the State." 

The Pisanis were originally merchants in skins, 
and travelled regularly once a year from Pisa to 
Venice in order to sell their wares. In the year 905, 
as the above quotation from the Libro d'Oro shows, 
they removed from their native town and took up 
their final abode in Venice. We hear little or 
nothing of importance concerning any member of 
the family in connection with Venetian affairs till 
the year 1355, when Beltrame Pelizzaro (a Pisani) 
discovered the plot of Doge Marin Fallier against 
the Republic. This Beltrame thought himself in- 
jured by the Republic, in that his discovery had not 
been better rewarded, and by his huge demands for 
money he first brought the family into evidence. 

At this time it was the fashion in Venice for its 
nobles and citizens to purchase estates upon the 
mainland, partly with a view to agricultural profit, 
but chiefly as a safeguard in case of an attack upon 
their city from country neighbours — a belt around 
the lagoon. Thus in the year 1468 a member of the 
Pisani family purchased from the Marquises of Ferrara 
a grant of land, and in 1688 they renewed the settle- 
ments and regained all those privileges which the 
Emperor Frederick II. bestowed upon the house of 
Este in 1200. These privileges, I may as well 



A DOGE'S FARM 55 

mention, continue for the convenience of Vescovana 
proprietors up to the end of this civilised nineteenth 
century, and the weekly fair of the country is held 
regularlyin the miniature piazza of Vescovana — a mere 
hamlet when compared with its neighbouring villages. 

Azzo and Bertaldo d'Este — two generals serving 
in the Venetian army — had fallen into debt, and 
were pleased to sell this portion of their property 
through the hands of the Republic to Almoro III. 
Pisani, a wealthy Pisan merchant. The estate at 
that time reached from Este to the Adige, covering 
an expanse of some eighteen thousand acres. But 
the ground was absolutely uncultivated. The soil, 
rich though it was, suffered from lack of drainage, 
and was constantly under water. Little, save marsh 
plants and rushes, existed in these swamps. Wild 
duck and snipe no doubt there were in plenty. They 
supplied the tables of the nobles in their Venetian 
palaces, but the nobles themselves could not inhabit 
such damp wildernesses. 

It is impossible for us who travel through Lom- 
bardy nowadays, and see it in its present finished 
and excellently fertile condition, to realise from what 
a chaos this cultivation first arose. It must, how- 
ever, be remembered that, though soil and climate 
have undoubtedly been favourable, the work of men 
and oxen has been colossal on this great delta of the 
Alpine rivers, and that the drainage of many thou- 



56 BAYS SPENT ON 

sands of square acres, with a fall of only some eight 
to ten metres to the sea, has been a stupendous feat 
requiring centuries of patient toil and hidden labour. 

From the middle of the fifteenth to the end of the 
nineteenth century the Pisanis have tended and cared 
for their grant of land. If the dead indeed walk, 
Almoro III. Pisani, the old Pisan merchant, who 
purchased it more than five hundred years ago, may 
feel just pride in prowling unseen across his fat and 
flourishing country. Fields upon fields of waving 
wheat he there will see ; trim-clipped acacia hedges 
lining the roads, and mulberries with vines upon 
them to separate the wheat and corn. The young 
maize shoots from shining sods, and quiet oxen, tall 
and white, stand in their well-kept stalls. No inch 
is left untrodden or uncared for, and so it is all over 
Lombardy. The cultivated fields stretch on for 
miles. They lap the feet of the Euganeans, they kiss 
the slopes of the Apennines, and end by the Adriatic. 

In writing about the Pisanis I must not omit to 
mention one of the Venetian Republic's greatest 
heroes, namely, Vettor Pisani, the admiral who in 
the year 1378 saved Venice from the Genoese at a 
minute when indeed she was almost vanquished. 
The admiral, it is true, belonged to a difl^erent branch 
of the Pisani family to those of whom I write, but 
his name, so famous in history, will inevitably recur 
to the mind of the reader. 



A DOGE'S FARM 57 

We read later in the Libro d'Oro that two of the 
family obtained the title of cardinal — Francesco and 
Alvise, an uncle and nephew. The nephew spent 
his days in scheming for the advancement of his 
uncle to the Holy See. But the plot was discovered 
early, and led to the ruin of both. The fresco 
portrait of Cardinal Francesco, fresh and vivid in 
colour, still looks down from the walls of the big 
room at Vescovana. 

In 1735 Alvise Pisani was created Doge. This 
was in the extreme decadence of the Republic, at a 
period of which there is little to recall. Luigi's life 
is interesting for things outside Venice itself. He 
was first sent as Venetian ambassador to the courts 
of France and England. To the latter country he 
went in the year 1702 to offer the congratulations of 
the Venetian Republic to Queen Anne upon the 
occasion of her accession. Amongst the Pisani 
pictures at the Palazzo Barbaro in Venice there is 
a portrait of this English queen, presented probably 
by herself at the- time. There is also a very 
fascinating picture of the ambassador's arrival in 
London : a thoroughly Venetian conception of the 
Tower of London and the Thames. 

It was Alvise's son — Almoro Luigi Pisani — who, 
through his immense ambition and love of luxury, 
acquired during his residence at the French court, 
practically ruined the Pisani family. Luigi, god- 



58 DAYS SPENT ON 

child of Louis XIV. of France, was, like his father, 
chosen by the Venetian Republic for their ambassador 
to foreign courts. In the year 1795 ^^ ^^^ recalled 
to Venice from London, and returning, full of his 
newly-acquired tastes, he determined to spend his 
fortune upon some monumental show. He pur- 
chased land upon the Brenta, a little way out of 
Padua, instead of using his own land at Vescovana, 
and there he built his palace of Stra. 

Stra may now be seen — a splendid edifice in 
splendid grounds. Its trees are planted in geo- 
metrical designs : towers and statues, elaborate iron 
gates and temples lead up to it. But the house is 
uninhabited, abandoned by owners who could not 
desire, even if they possessed the wealth, to inhabit 
such a soulless monument. Stra is a mighty pleasure 
house fit for a selfish soul, a silly king surrounded 
by a troop of idle courtiers to take his summer ease 
in. But put down square on the bare Venetian plain 
it becomes a mockery. Little hills, deep woods, and 
running rivulets are needed for palaces like these. 
Maize fields clash with hornbeam labyrinths, and the 
big unshadowed sun is pitiless in bare Venetia. 

To cover the building expenses of Stra, Luigi 
called continually for money from his bailiffs at 
Vescovana. When these supplies were exhausted 
the bailiffs were forced to borrow money. Conse- 
quently when the father of the last owner succeeded 



A DOGE'S FARM 59 

to the property he found it so heavily mortgaged 
that his whole life's energy was spent in the attempt 
to bring it back to some state of order and freedom. 
One jewel and joy alone is left to the Pisanis from 
the folly of Luigi, and that is the portrait of himself 
and his family painted by Longhi. This picture 
hangs in the drawing-room of the present owner's 
house at Palazzo Barbaro in Venice. Here we meet 
a bright-eyed, laughing lady in flowered brocade, 
surrounded by a tumbling heap of very fat and 
fascinating children. Some older men and mytho- 
logical figures stand behind her. A Pisani brother 
is in the foreground wearing black satin and a white 
periwig, and Luigi stands behind him pointing to a 
distant landscape, where the buildings of Stra rise 
over the tree-tops. This picture is so living, so 
vivid in colour, that one seems to know and love the 
people painted there and to join them in laughter 
and in the pleasure of their costly toy. 

Luigi's grandchildren and great-grandchildren put 
all their energies into bringing the estates of Vesco- 
vana into order. They abandoned Stra, they left 
their palaces in Venice, and the last of the Pisanis, 
Almoro III., lived almost entirely in the country, 
where, with the help of his English wife, he worked 
to make Vescovana the model "Doge's Farm," which 
we who go there now regard with such delight, and 
where we spend such pleasant days. 




BOCCA DELLE DENONCIE SECRETE. 



CHAPTER II 



THE MAKING OF THE DOGE S FARM 



TT is not easy to describe the Doge's Farm to 
those who have not been in Italy. It would 
not be easy to describe to an Italian, who had never 
visited England, an English manor-house and its 
surrounding scenes. In many ways the two resemble 
each other, and work on the same principles, yet it 
would be difficult to find poles wider apart than 
the village-green and the southern piazza. Both 



60 



BAYS SPENT ON A DOGE'S FARM 61 

serve the same purpose. How differently is life 
conducted in each ! In England you talk of the 
church tower, in Italy of the campanile. The 
English rector will very likely know how many owls 
have built in his tower, and it is possible that the 
young men of his parish may have accomplished a 
chime, which they will ring on Sunday morning, 
when the people of the village and the inhabitants 
of the " house " go quietly to church. In Italy, on 
the other hand, the owls haven't much of a chance, 
for the campanile is public property. Any lounger, 
bored by the piazza, may rush upon the bell- 
ropes in the campanile at any hour of the day, 
and pull them singly or in numbers, till the bells 
clash above him. On Sundays the girls will trip 
through the Italian piazza in thin lace veils — as 
across the English green in sailor hats. 

Love and calm may grow round the green, but 
romance and southern callousness are bred in the 
piazza. 

The Doge's Farm remains at root absolutely 
Italian, though a tinge of England entered with an 
English bride. This is chiefly marked by the 
manner in which the villa has been shut off from 
the piazza. In most Italian villages the two are 
more merged into one another. 

Vescovana lies beside the canal of Santa Caterina, 
about twenty miles from Padua, Its nearest railway 



62 DAYS SPENT ON A DOGE'S FARM 

station is Stanghella, but the express trains from 
Venice to Florence only stop at Rovigo, which is 
seven miles from Vescovana and the largest town in 
the district. Even as far back as the fifteenth 
century we find the name of Vescovana printed on 
local maps. It is a small village, chiefly composed 
of low mud huts, which straggle singly down the 
banks of the canal. The piazza is deeply shadowed 
by acacia-trees, and is a cool and pleasant place where 
the market is held on Fridays. Here, too, on big 
feast days the procession leaves the church and makes 
the round of the square. To the left the priest's 
house is built — a small cottage almost hidden by its 
magnolia-trees and creeping plants. Next to this 
comes the campanile — one of those slender brick 
buildings peculiar to Lombardy, and quite discon- 
nected with the body of the church, as is the fashion 
in Gromboolian bell-towers. The church itself is 
large, its facade painted in pure white. On Sundays 
the entire population waits outside its doors till a 
Pisani is prepared to go to mass. The mass also 
waits, for patriarchal principles are preserved on the 
Doge's Farm. 

The whole of the third part of the triangle is 
filled by the villa, but the house is so low, and is 
painted in so dark a colour, that at first you scarcely 
discover its presence there as you approach through 
the sunlight of the road. Also it is surrounded by 



' -/ • V- 




A DOGE'S FARM 65 

tall shrubs and trees, and there is a sombre, 
mysterious look about the ancient building which 
has given rise to many local myths. The central 
part is bare of creepers, but the long wings which 
stretch away almost out of sight — so absurdly long 
do they appear to be — are covered with a dense 
growth of ivy and are used above as granaries. 
Birds and big tussore moths, mice, snails, and 
lizards make this creeper their abode. It is splendid 
cover for the naturalist. Over the front door, the 
parti-coloured lioness of the Pisanis ramps above the 
date, M.D.CXIII., when the house was last renewed. 
From this rather sombre approach one suddenly 
passes through the halls and out to the south side, 
which is most literally the sunny side of the Doge*s 
Farm. Here the light blazes on yellow walls ; 
here the bees have their hives, the dogs their 
home, and the hum of life comes on the air from 
the stables and the kitchen. There is, in fact, an 
accumulation of warmth, and sound, and colour, 
which people passing along the outside road have 
never dreamed of. At any season of the year you 
will find that southern garden full of flowers, for 
she who made it loves it well. The garden is the 
sole creation of a modern English fancy, and has 
nothing to do with the old Pisani nobles. They 
did not use their spare ground thus, but planned 
it in a stiffer style, and for purposes of use, not 
beauty (see p. 69). 

5 



66 DAYS SPENT ON 

In the year 1850, Count Almoro III., the last 
of the Pisanis of San Stefano, came into the property. 
A few years later he married, and brought his young 
English bride to live with him upon the Doge's 
Farm. Her first impressions of the place were not 
exactly pleasant. The great long villa stood bare 
and flat upon the plain. No single tree shielded it 
from the baking suns of summer, no flower-bed was 
there to strengthen the buds of spring. And worst 
of all, the one claim of the big house to architectural 
beauty, its colonnaded flight of entrance steps, had 
been ruthlessly torn down to suit the fashion of the 
day, and to flatter the imagined tastes of an English 
bride. The garden consisted of square plots of 
earth, hedged in with box. Its principal features 
were the two huge threshing-floors in front of the 
dining-room windows. On these squares all the 
wheat of the entire property was spread, threshed, 
and stacked in season. A single pear-tree stood 
alone to tell of an avenue long ago died down, and 
a little rose bush, a maiden blush, had clung to its 
life by the threshing-floor. The high-road led 
straight up through the village to the front door. 
The peasants came and went along it. They not 
unnaturally lingered at times to peer through the 
windows and watch how the great folk ate. 

The family lived entirely in the basement of the 
house, and passing pairs of pigs would wander in on 




DOGARESSA MOROSINA MOROSINI 

{_From a portrait by Titian in the possession of Countess Fisani] 



To fact page 66 



A DOGE'S FARM 67 

a warm morning to wallow on the silk divan where 
the young bride sat at work. Their owners, follow- 
ing to fetch these vagrant hogs, marvelled greatly at 
the new padronas screams of horror. All the large 
rooms on the first floor were uninhabited, and used 
for drying beans or storing lumber. Strings were 
stretched from end to end of the big drawing-room, 
and here the washing was hung to dry. It is true 
that the room had the reputation of being haunted, 
but the beauty of its lines, the charm of its airy 
vastness, do away with the thought of ghosts. 

Throughout the country the same condition of 
things existed. Roads were scarce, and often so 
rough and miry that they could only be crossed in 
heavy cars drawn by oxen. A drive from Vescovana 
to Este was taken by the Pisani ladies early in this 
century with all the pomp of a Roman procession. 
They mounted a springless van, and were dragged 
through furrowed paths by teams of white cattle to 
the town at the foot of the hills. To us this pro- 
ceeding may sound new, and to our fancy sweet, 
but to the ladies and the oxen the charm was of a 
most mixed character. 

On the north side of the house, by the door, 
a strange remnant of past centuries existed, namely, 
a lion's head carved in stone, let into the wall. 
Under it the words, "Bocca delle Denoncie Segrete,'* 
are written. Into this mysterious hole any writing 



68 DAYS SPENT ON 

against the management of the property, complaints 
against individuals, secret, and usually unpleasant, 
communications were slipped. Inside the house 
they were opened and read. 

Indeed, the whole house retained a something of 
austerity : an utter lack of modern comfort and 
refinements. Its immense size, too, made it the 
more unmanageable. The Contessa has told me 
how in the Austrian's time they thought nothing of 
lodging a company of some two hundred men and 
horses in the house itself. 

It is natural that the strong English instincts ot 
the new Contessa should have made her shudder at 
the general sunbaked and unsoftened aspect of this 
huge farmhouse, or villa, which was to be her 
home. Yet she saw that there was a beauty in the 
scene, quite apart from the bareness and breadth of 
sky, namely, a glorious fertile soil. There were 
lilies in the ditches, water-flags and rushes, but so 
few flowers in the fields, and she needed flowers, as 
English women do, and shade — above all things, 
shade — then the roses would grow and the birds 
would come. Also, a beautiful house must hold 
beautiful things. 

Slowly but surely the thing was begun. Gradually 
a new and growing world of green and coloured 
things arose round the bare walls ; and within, bit 
by bit, the rooms became furnished and habitable. 



A DOGE'S FARM 69 

The washing was no longer dried in the upper 
drawing-rooms, and there the portrait of the 
Pisani cardinal smiled on the fitter decoration of 
his walls. Ground on the north side of the house 
was enclosed, the road turned a little aside to run 
away from the front door. Pigs can no longer push 
through the iron gates. Magnolia-trees and bushes 
of hydrangea bloom freely in this quiet plot of 
ground. And, strange to tell, a bird has built in the 
" Bocca delle Denoncie Segrete " — a long-tailed tit 
has filled the lion's mouth with down. He and his 
small wife yearly bring their funny tumbling brood 
out of this mysterious hole, and you hear them 
twittering in the shade of the large-leafed creeper 
which now covers the formerly dismal spot. 

The box hedges and threshing-floor on the 
south side were gradually replaced by grass and 
flower-beds, and a dense circle of trees planted 
round the whole garden, which covers an extent of 
some fourteen acres. The trees have grown well. 
Tall white poplars, chestnuts, and catalpas rear 
their heads above the pines and lesser shrubs, and 
little paths and alleys wind among the syringa and 
tamarisk groves which line the moat. The pear- 
tree still stands as a centre to the modern garden, 
its skeleton covered with creepers. And the little 
white rose runs riot over every bed amongst its 
finer but less lovely brethren. 



70 DA YS SPENT ON A DOGE'S FARM 



It is needless to say that many difficulties 
came into the way of the ambitious lady who 
made this garden. The Lombard soil, so rich 
and excellent for crops and corn, proved itself 
too thick and heavy for the roots of tenderer 
flowers. Silver sand — a remnant of granite boulders 
in an Alpine valley — was scooped from the bed of the 
Adige, and light leaf-mould brought down from the 
hills. And now, after almost forty years of patient 
toil, hampered by the blazing heat of summer suns, 
by the frosts and floods in winter, hail, blight, and 
the inexperience of her gardeners, the owner of 
Vescovana may look forth with no inconsiderable 
pride upon the results of her hard labour on the 
untutored plains of great Gromboolia. 




GROUND PLAN OF THE DOGE'S FARM AND GARDEN 
IN 1700. 



P 




GATES OF THE DOGE'S FARM. 



CHAPTER III 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS 



T 



HE visitor to Vescovana must submit to a 



regime. 



There is no harm — there is often a 



certain satisfaction in thus submitting — especially it 
the regime be arranged in a manner likely to suit the 
individual, as it is at Vescovana. 

Everything works apparently by clockwork in the 
Doge's Farm ; that is to say, upon first arrival 
it seems to do so. After a lengthened residence 
you realise the fact that Gromboolian strings are 
very hard to pull, and that it needs a considerable 
intellect to pull them successfully or even at all. 



71 



72 DAYS SPENT ON 

We will say that you get out or your train at 
Sant' Elena on an afternoon in June, and are shown 
into some comfortable carriage which is in waiting 
at the gate, then are at once driven off by a coachman 
in black, who gives you to understand that he is an 
automaton, and not to be lightly addressed. But 
you are, of course, engaged in thinking of a thou- 
sand details. " Where is my luggage ? " you cry 
distractedly, as your ticket has been silently taken 
from you by an old peasant. A wave of the whip 
from the automaton shows you your portmanteau 
following in a stone cart, which is driven by the 
peasant, and dragged by a lively mule with red 
tassels to his ears. Much relieved, you sink again 
into your carriage and contemplate the landscape. 
You feel at first appalled by its monotony. The 
white road, with a ditch on either side, leads through 
interminable fields, with now and then a mud hut, 
some oxen, or a stable. The oxen are beautiful 
beasts, but you know nothing of their points ; the 
stables appear to you rather low and very much 
alike. The blue phantoms of the Euganean Hills, 
rising to the east, alone satisfy your curiosity. You 
already begin to wish that there were any possi- 
bility of getting in amongst them. (On this subject 
your return journey will rouse very different feelings.) 
Thus for nearly an hour you are driven along. 
Then the monotony becomes a little more polished. 




DOGE MARIX GRIMANI 
[From a portrait in the possession of Countess Pisani] 



To face fage 72 



A DOGE'S FARM 73 

Trees are planted round the stables, and their oxen 
look fatter and taller than those around Sant' Elena. 
There are hedges and red gates before the farms, and 
the carts which you encounter are painted blue, and 
have a lion rampant and '' Almoro III." printed on 
their boards. You know nothing, perhaps, of 
Almoro III., still less of lions rampant ; but you 
become conscious of something individual in the air 
and in the country. Also the whole populace begins 
to bow, both women and men uncovering their heads 
as you pass. You imagine that they bow to you, 
and try to return the numerous salutations, but in 
truth they acknowledge the automaton, the horses, 
and the carriage. 

You are within the property of the Pisanis, and 
you have become a part of its system. 

The road winds along the top of the canal past 
the municipality, the inn, and the houses of the 
village, and below there is a square full of acacia- 
trees hiding a long, low building. At this point 
the coachman raises a brass horn to his lips and 
blows three distinct blasts, which proceeding natu- 
rally astonishes you. At the same minute a bell 
is rung over the gates — these gates are pulled open, 
and you are driven round what Miss Austen would 
probably term a "sweep" — i,e.^ a gravel road with 
a bed of roses in its midst. Two motionless men- 
servants stand upon the steps. 



74 DAYS SPENT ON 

Bewildered by so much unexpected clockwork in 
the middle of this sleepy plain, you get out. Need- 
less to say, the mule, though lively, has not kept 
pace with the horses ; and you find yourself, as it 
were, swept off your feet without even the pro- 
verbial toothbrush, in this immense house where all 
seems new. There is almost a chill in the big, cool 
rooms. All their shutters are closed against the sun, 
and their air is weighted with the scent of cut 
flowers. You are at once set down to tea and a 
variety of thin biscuits peculiar to teas at Ves- 
covana. Your eyes are attracted to a thousand 
objects of curiosity and interest within the immense 
drawing-room. China birds float from the ceiling, 
huge damask curtains fall from the walls, and an 
Eastern sense of comfort and joy in colour is spread 
over the whole, together with a French refinement 
shown in the cascades of roses falling from elevated 
glass bowls. Through cracks in the blinds you see 
a garden full of trees and flowers, into which it is 
at once your desire to plunge ; and, indeed, a sense 
of having entered a palace of art is strong upon you, 
and it is with great unwillingness that you embark 
on other topics, with a hostess whose conversation is 
as excellent as is the management of her property. 
No sooner, however, is your tea finished than the 
carriage is announced, and it is taken for granted 
that you will accompany your hostess upon her 



A DOGE'S FARM 75 

afternoon employments in the country. The plan 
sounds attractive. You go. Your tastes have been 
rightly divined, and whereas your hostess enters at 
once her closed carriage, you are put into an open 
victoria and whirled off in pursuit of the brougham. 

One visitor from across the Atlantic to Vescovana 
exclaimed indignantly at the sight of the said brougham 
and victoria : " This," she cried, " is not at all what 
I was led to expect, but a car drawn by milk-white 
oxen — a countess crowned with poppies!" The 
lady had, I believe, derived her interesting infor- 
mation from a literary compatriot. Nor, though 
highly coloured, was it without foundation, as will 
be presently shown (p. 157). 

You, however, get into the victoria without such 
feelings of disappointment, and again make the 
turn of the sweep. A servant rushes out from 
behind a bush and closes the gates behind you, and 
you are then enveloped in the cloud of dust which 
the carriage in front stirs up. As you whirl along 
the roads all heads are uncovered, and at every red 
gate a bowing form is descried, prepared to pull them 
open. If this form does not appear the automaton 
at once draws forth his horn and blows a demanding 
blast. A tremendous amount of conversation follows 
between the occupant of the brougham and the form, 
and usually some cowherds and a few women and 
children cluster round and stare. Your puzzled 



je DAYS SPENT ON 

brain rightly divines that the form is a bailiff, and 
that the words concern farm matters. But the little 
Italian which you command, and which you prob- 
ably acquired from a study of the classics, is here 
worse than useless. It merely serves to confuse you 
further as it enables you to understand the vehe- 
mence of the expressions chosen, and not the purely 
Gromboolian significance which they imply. 

A desire seizes upon you to enter one of those 
farms, having now counted the gates and conver- 
sation of four in succession, while you sat outside 
of them, interested, but chiefly embarrassed, by the 
many eyes directed at you and your elegant con- 
veyance. You pass through the sleepy village of 
Stanghelkj where the populace turns from regarding 
the piazza to regard you, and then at last one of the 
red gates is thrown open, and you drive through a 
hedge of mulberry-trees and under the arcades of a 
stable. A circle of farm labourers is immediately 
formed round the carriages. The door of the 
brougham is opened, your hostess gets out, and, 
catching up the long skirts of her gown, she enters 
the stables. A rather stormy altercation follows, but 
the sole cause for displeasure which you can note is 
the fact that a calf has half strangled itself by lying 
down too far from its halter. To your astonish- 
ment the Contessa herself gets into the stall and 
disengages it. In the meantime the coachman has 



A DOGE'S FARM 77 

entered the stable bearing with him two rusty 
biscuit-tins which contain a red substance. Into 
this go the white hands of your hostess, and you 
realise that it is salt which she is about to give to 
her oxen. These great creatures turn their heads ; 
some or them begin to low when they hear her 
voice. She knows each one individually, and 
addresses them in the most endearing terms. Over 
each stall are printed the titles of its two occupants, 
together with the dates of their birth and the names 
of their mothers. 

You have hitherto kept at a safe distance ; you are 
now called upon to admire : " Come speak to my 
bull ; admire his immense beauty. Admire my 
angel Magnifico ! '' and your hostess caresses the 
enormous creature, stroking his huge neck and 
pressing her hands upon his lowering forehead. It 
is true that he idly whisks his heavy tail into your 
face, but as you have become part of a system you 
follow blindly, and are surprised to find that a bull 
is a very soft and amiable creature, charming to 
caress. Indeed, from this moment you acquire a 
love and taste for these heroes and heroines of 
Vescovana which you could never have foreseen as 
possible. 

A woman has arrived from a neighbouring cottage 
with a basin of water and a clean towel. She stands 
as though just wound up at the open door. The 



78 DAYS SPENT ON 

padrona washes her hands in the basin and passes 
back into her carriage. The cortege moves off ; the 
bailiff and the '* guardians," who, by the by, appear 
to be quite unabashed by the reprimands they have 
received, bowing along by the brougham windows to 
the last ; the gates are closed, and you yourself 
being by this time tuned to a mood of absolute 
submission, begin to seek for beauty in the ditches, 
and repose in a stupid indifference. After this you 
go into two or three more farms, and are surprised 
to find precisely the same scenes re-enacted in each. 
At eight you return to the house. The horn is 
blown, the bell rung. You pray for a minute's rest. 
But no. A sweet air of flowers is wafted in from 
the garden which innumerable peasant girls are 
watering. Another bell rings : '' Ah ! it has only 
just rung — the dinner bell," says your indefatigable 
hostess ; *' there is just time to look at Crispin de 
Pass and the Mockery." You are told to abandon 
your ordinary hat and to place on your head some 
strange straw device of which there are piles in the 
hall. Then out you go. 

You are walked slowly over gravel paths ; you are 
pushed into an arbour and told that its name is the 
" Blue Devils," in which case you think it a very 
suitable resting-place. But you are hastily dragged 
out again to admire the beauties of a freshly-mapped 
parterre full of terra-cotta jars and scarlet geraniums. 



A DOGE'S FARM 79 

This you are informed is ** Crispin de Pass " ; then 
on you tread to another arbour, which you are told 
is " Miss Somebody's Bower.'* Innumerable monu- 
ments to " E," " B," and " L " confront you, and 
finally a pyramid of stones, surmounted by a sign- 
post bearing the word " Mockery," further con- 
founds you ; whilst beyond this rise the " Walls of 
Jericho" and the "Temple of Baal." A gardener 
follows in your train. He is commanded to give a 
snip here, to tie a string there, to pull up a rose-tree, 
and plant perhaps a daisy in exchange. The Ave 
Maria comes over the trees from the church, and a 
misty golden light floods the whole land. 

Who and what was Crispin de Pass .? Swiss 
pumps, bare bowers, blue devils, and a mockery — 
what are these things to you ^ You merely see 
around you a southern garden full of roses which 
fascinate your northern eye. The size and scent of 
the magnolias charm you, and the delicious lavishness 
of sweet-pea hedges. The sleepy moat, overgrown 
with water-lilies and pink tamarisk, delights you, for 
here a gondola lies hidden under syringa-trees ; the 
singing of the birds, the groves of poplar and of pine, 
and the little arbour on a hill all sweetly scented with 
honeysuckle, where a red terra-cotta Madonna has 
her shrine — these things entrance you more than the 
botanical specimens which have cost so much thought 
and care. 



8o 



BAYS SPENT ON 



Physically and mentally " fagged '* by all the 
novelty, you crawl into the house and stumble 
into evening clothes. You find your things spread 







SHRINE OF THE RED MADONNA. 



neatly out in an ideal bedroom. Mirrors confront 
you at every turn, magnificent roses crowd your 
dressing-table, together with a thousand knick- 
knacks ; your windows open on a balcony full of 



A DOGE'S FARM 8i 

flowering oleander, and the nightingales have 
begun to sing like mad. When dressed you go 
into the drawing-room, in something of a hurry ; 
for having been informed that the dinner is at 
eight, you are shocked to hear the village clock 
strike nine. 

As you pass through the door into the drawing- 
room, a form rises from a table in the background 
and confronts you in the twilight. It is A. who 
will lead you later to the cities of the hills ; and 
read you Leopardi, Virgil, Dante, Homer. 

The Contessa now appears from some side door, 
and though the night is hot, she wears a long 
lamb's wool cloak over her evening gown. Her 
hair is pinned together, as it seems to you, with 
doges' caps made of long pearls and diamonds. But 
instead of a ducal phrase, you are greeted by a 
message from the stable: "A calf has just been 
born at the Dieci," she says, holding out some 
bailiff's grimy paper. *' You must give it your 
name. Is it not a true honour to have one of my 
beautiful bovi called after you .^ " 

Being now part of the " system," you realise what 
you might not have done before, that in giving 
your name to a cow you are receiving, and by no 
means conferring, a favour. Your name, and those 
of your more celebrated ancestors, are now raked 
over the coals of the Contessa's criticism. The 



82 DAYS SPENT ON 

most beautiful is selected, or that which has won 
most honour, and it is dictated to A., who, at 
a later hour, will print it on one of those boards 
which you noticed in the stables. You are now at 
last marshalled off to dinner. You enter an immense 
square dining-room, which is lighted solely by 
clusters of small fairy lights scattered through the 
pink heaps of roses on the tablecloth, or amongst 
the syringa branches falling from baskets on the wall. 
These walls are covered with frescoes representing 
trees and birds, so faintly and delicately done you 
almost feel yourself once more out in the open 
air. 

The meal, though almost endless, is accompanied 
by a conversation so brilliant and amusing that you 
are spared the dismal task or noting that with such 
a dish at the beginning there is sure to be an 
unwelcome number to follow. It were difficult to 
describe the conversation of the Doge's Farm. It 
is almost universal — it flies from the naming of a 
calf, to the loves of Cleopatra ; the ploughing of a 
field, to the ^'Inferno " of Dante ; the broidering of 
a napkin, to the policy of Gladstone or the sonnets of 
Michelangelo. A. gives his opinion on most subjects, 
and you cannot help remarking that this opinion is 
unfailingly the exact opposite of that expressed by 
every one else. 

The servants come and go noiselessly across the 



A DOGE'S FARM 83 

heavy carpets. They bring you plates or strange 
designs ; they take them and replace them with 
others. Here you partake of a jellied swan, there 
of an eastern gourd. 

But if the servants are silent, the same cannot be 
said of the cats, which keep a screaming guard 
around the table. They are all black, all thin, and 
tall, and their eyes have a particularly yellow look 
in that dimly-lighted room. If one is left outside 
the window, the panes are vehemently rattled by 
her gentle paws, and these demands to enter are 
immediately complied with by a silent footman. 
They jump on the sideboard, and there devour 
any morsel left upon the plates ; they crunch the 
chicken bones ; they pounce upon the half-gnawed 
stalks of your asparagus. Their mistress knows 
them each by name : " The King of the Moors," 
*' Nerina,'' *' Straniera," and a host of others, whose 
titles and pedigree you may perhaps in time acquire 
also. It is further the pleasure of these fascinating 
beasts — and none of their pleasures are for an 
instant checked, as the Empress Frederick found 
when Nerina jumped upon her knee and seized the 
salmon from her plate at dinner — it is their pleasure 
then to call your attention to their appetite by 
standing on their hind legs and scratching their 
peculiarly pointed claws up and down your knees. 
Woe to the light lace dress, the cleanly muslin, or 



84 DAYS SPENT ON 

the shining cloth. A dog who answers to different 
names at different seasons of the year, but which at 
your season is called "Tirindoo,'* wages a political 
war with the cats. Aware that numbers are against 
her, it is Tirindoo's policy to work upon one's 
pity, and to raise a fuller voice, and one of agony 
as though attacked, above those screaming ones of 
her enemies. Thus, to a discussion on the Sonnets 
of Michelangelo or the " Debacle " of Zola, is 
added a chorus of yelps and yawls peculiar to the 
table of Vescovana ; whilst in the further distance 
of a hidden pantry a crowd of doves send forth 
a gentle but persistent cooing. And from the 
garden, owls and nightingales join in the praise of 
night. 

You wash your fingers with warm water and a 
lemon, then ladies and gentlemen return arm-in-arm 
up the steep stairs to the drawing-room. Here the 
windows are tightly closed, though the night is 
extremely hot. One shutter stands half ajar, and 
lets through the heavy scent of vine flowers on 
the pergola which well-nigh sickens you by its 
sweetness. Then you remember that fever is bred 
in that air as surely as the flower of the vines. The 
vast hall, stuffed with objects, which it is your 
desire to contemplate, is so dimly lighted by shaded 
lamps that you submit to an armchair and a state 
of semi-lethargy, through which you begin to see 



A DOGE'S FARM 85 

nothing but doges' caps embroidered on every 
object in a series of golden threads. 

A. retires to his table in the background, where he 
spends his time between a breviary and the inscription 
of your name upon a board ; the finishing of accounts, 
and some words on Dante. He then, as it seems, 
falls asleep. 

You are sorry when bedtime comes, as the con- 
versation has been strangely new and pleasing. You 
find in your room an elaborate apparatus for making 
your own lemonade, and several pastilles placed on 
a piece of brick to burn against mosquitoes. Your 
shutters are heavily barred, but you have yet the 
English energy to wrench them open and snufF up 
that warm delicious air of an Italian night. Then 
you determine to close the windows, but at least to 
have the moonlight enter your room if not the air. 
You now realise that you are honestly tired, and 
pray devoutly for a well-earned sleep, into which 
you immediately fall. 

But what is this noise — this hurrying to and rro, 
these screeching sounds, this glaring light, this 
deadly scent ? — to all which things you suddenly 
awaken at a later hour. Up and down go a 
hundred scurrying feet above your head, round 
and round some heavy loads are thrown and 
dragged, while your head is burdened with the 
unbearable combination of lavender and pastilles. 



S6 BAYS SPENT ON 

You rush to the window to bar at least the shutters 
against a moon which in future you will leave to 
lovers to admire, and against the songs of nightin- 
gales which poets may praise in songs you'll never 
read. You tear open your door to admit some 
shadow of a draught from the ghostliest of passages, 
and burying your head once more in the embroidered 
sheets, you attempt to forget those indescribable 
noises which ramp about the upper stories of a 
doge's farm. 

Some one comes to open your shutters. Another 
servant follows a little later with your breakfast. 
You feel that all the clocks are well wound up, 
and that you yourself must begin to tick con- 
tentedly. A delicious air, a bath of sunlight full 
of the songs of morning birds, and the scent of 
flowers, streams through your window. A silver 
tray, a coffee-pot, a cup, a jar of milk, some 
biscuits, and a piece of toast — these things compose 
your morning meal, with a due seasoning of doges' 
caps. You take it when and where you will — in 
your room, or out on your marble balcony amongst 
the oleanders. 

The quiet voices of other guests are speaking 
under the pergola. "Did you hear the rats.?" 
says one. **It is rather a bore having the granaries 
iust over the bedrooms." "And the nightingales," 
answers another, who is a very cheerful guest ; 



A DOGE'S FARM 87 

*'what a noise they do kick up in this place! 
But one soon gets accustomed to them, and to the 
rats too, for that matter." 

The voices disappear under the arcades, where 
in a short time you join them, to visit those far- 
famed Pisani granaries which produced the cause 
of your night terrors. 

You now receive a message from the Contessa 
that a servant will show you over the granaries or 
any part of the house you may wish to see. You 
are accordingly marshalled through every corner 
and cranny by a domestic, who bears a per- 
fect burden of keys, and solemnly unlocks the 
doors. These keys have large wooden labels 
which flop and clank. The cheerful guest who 
accompanies you tells you that the actual length 
of the house of Vescovana exceeds that of the 
piazza of San Marco at Venice. You are first 
shown through all the linen cupboards, and if you 
have an economical mind it will surprise you to 
hear that your sheets and towels are washed at 
Mestre and ironed in Milan, and that the doges' 
caps are embroidered in the convents of France. 
You are then taken up narrow staircases and into 
vast tracts of granary. The countless windows are 
opened by the domestic, letting in a warm light 
through curtains of wistaria and of ivy. As you 
probably know nothing of the merits of beans and 



SS DAYS SPENT ON 

maize, and care still less, you retain of these 
granaries but a very dim impression, only, maybe, a 
recollection of hundreds of square feet of grain 
spread on their floors ; but this lesson in their 
geography will enable you to follow out more 
precisely the nightly orgies above your bedroom. 

From the granaries you descend to the barchesse : 
these are immense arcades where all the farm 
machines, sacks, seats, &c., are housed and guarded 
by a herd of Maremma sheep-dogs. Here, too, are 
innumerable beehives looking out upon parterres of 
lavender. The melancholy domestic will tell you 
that his mistress rarely eats the honey of her bees, 
though she spares no money in maintaining them. 
She likes to think that her darlings do not 
starve. 

You now proceed to the kitchens. There a 
charming young chef and two most lovely kitchen- 
maids do the honours. Then into the stables, and 
here the Oracle (such is the nickname of the coach- 
man) will gJadly hector over you as long as you 
care to stay. You are surprised to see two carriages 
being got ready at this early hour of the day. 
Vines shadow all the stable walls, and swallows pass 
in and out of the blue curtains across the door. 
You pass on into the kitchen-garden — honeysuckle 
and tea-roses climb and battle about its walls. 
Suddenly you are startled by the sound of a bell. 



A DOGE'S FARM 89 

The cheerful guest remembers that you are to lunch 
at eleven. Off you dash over the length of the 
Piazza di San Marco, and finding your breakfast 
things in your room, realise how unprepared you are 
for lunch. It is scarcely eleven. You go downstairs 
and wait beneath the pergola, as you are told that 
the Contessa is still in the garden. There are few 
places quite as hot, or as fascinating, as this pergola 
on a summer's day. The Contessa now emerges 
from "Crispin de Pass," and you all go in to lunch. 
Strange brown saucepans with eggs are presented to 
you, potatoes, and Turkish rice. A crunching on 
the gravel announces the carriage. "You are ready, 
of course," says the Contessa. You realise that an 
early meal means an early start. You rush upstairs 
and seize your hat and sketch-book. 

"Where are we going to be sent to?" says the 
cheerful guest, standing in the drawing-room. 

"To Praglia. You ought to see Praglia." 

"What is Praglia.'^" you ask mechanically. 

"A convent — a beautiful place. It is only twenty 
miles from here. You will be back in good time for 
dinner. I expect you at seven. Go — go — have 
pleasure." 

Your hostess lies down upon a cool divan and her 
guests pass out into the carriage and the scorching 
midday heat. 

A. is already established as guide in the carriage, 



90 DAYS SPENT ON 

silent and a bit alarming, but inwardly rejoicing. 
The gates are opened by the bush-menial, who 
afterwards shuts them. The dust flies up, and off 
you go upon one of those interminable drives which 
are at once the hope and the despair of visitors to 
Vescovana. 

You pass through a country which has not yet 
revealed its charm to you. Its monotony alone 
is apparent to your eyes. The heat is intense. 
A, puts a large blue cotton handkerchief over his 
wideawake and falls asleep, or feigns to do so, in 
his corner. He wakes occasionally to abuse the 
coachman, to frown at a parishioner, to point out a 
herd of geese, which it is his joke to call " roba 
Inglese." He also insists upon having the carriage 
closed when you approach a town. At last you get 
into the Euganean Hills, a delicious region full of 
poems and romance — far sweeter and more lovely 
than anything you could have hoped to see. Is it 
the monotony of the plain which has endeared them 
to you suddenly, and made their watercourses, their 
lanes, their meadows, and their bushy banks so 
soothing and so grateful to your eyes ? Certain it 
is you will not be allowed to catch anything but 
fleeting visions of their beauties. The horses, which 
are wound up even more mechanically than other 
things within the Doge's Farm, jog on at a hopeless 
trot. Sometimes they stop mechanically to breathe. 




Photo by Professor F. Trotnbitii 

A GARDEN WALL AT ESTE L\ THE EUGAXEAN HILLS 



To face page 90 



A DOGE'S FARM 91 

Clumps of cypress-trees, towering from grass-grown 
paths above some ruined convent, excite your imagi- 
nation. A villa, a little lake, a bosco ; a lizard on a 
mossy stone, a grove of flowering acacia, a sleepy 
shrine — things you desire to touch, to feel, to 
see — all are passed by, and towards 3 p.m. you 
come to Praglia. The charms of that great unin- 
habited building, its glory and its desolation, seize 
hold of you. Gladly would you linger in its cloisters, 
to pluck the pink hybiscus, to stretch for maidenhair 
down mouldering marble wells where fig-trees grow 
between the stones. And you could sit for hours on 
the window-ledges of those quiet cells, looking across 
the vineyards to the plain, feeling the sea beyond, 
and watching the progress of the summer clouds 
across the sky. 

But you must go. You may not even linger 
before the radiant countenance of Montagna's 
Madonna and St. John, or trace the patterns on 
the terra-cotta friezes. Back, back from all this 
quiet splendour of old monks within enchanted halls ; 
you, as they did, must forsake it, and turn back 
across the baking plain. 

**The Contessa," says A., "dines at seven." 

Towards sunset sweet scents arise from the fields, 
and lovely golden lights play over and through the 
entire land. "Fever," murmurs A. several times 
in succession. You cannot ignore his hints, though 



92 DA YS SPENT ON A DOGE'S FARM 

you disbelieve in their prophetic insight. Once 
more you submit. The carriage is shut, the window 
closed. You sink into a lethargy from which not 
even a June sunset can arouse you; and at about 
eight a bell is rung, and you realise that the forty 
miles have been completed. The Contessa comes 
down to meet you beautifully attired. 

"Make haste, make haste!" she cries. "Dinner 
is ready." 

You dust, you dress, you descend. There are the 
roses, there the fairy-lights ; and thus your second 
day is finished upon the Doge's Farm. 

Rats may racket above your head, and nightingales 
may make night hideous out in the garden. You 
hear them not. You sleep the sleep of absolute 
lassitude and submission. 














1. •■■ 

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CHURCH AND HOUSE OF VESCOVANA, SEEN FROM THE CANAL. 




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MULBERRY. 



CHAPTER IV 



SECOND THOUGHTS 



THE first Impressions modify. They assume 
character and individual interests within a 
very few days. Farms, roads, and fields gain new 
and Jiving beauties. The house becomes a com- 
fortable home wherein to read and write at ease 
during the morning hours. The farms, their 
bailiffs, and their oxen all assume real and living 
characters. The automaton turns out to be an 
oracle who almost rules the ruler. The brougham 

93 



94 DAYS SPENT ON 

is lightly termed the Calais-Douvre, owing to its 
swinging and superior movement over the channels 
of Gromboolia. The horn and bell are found 
necessities with servants who incline to morning as 
well as afternoon siestas. The Mockery contains 
plenty of reality : small green frogs, unchecked 
weeds, and rhubarb, as well as rare and tenderly 
nurtured plants. The impassioned voices of mistress 
and of men are often raised about the mending of 
a cart-wheel, the cutting of a ditch. The groans 
of A. have no connection with heretical beliefs of 
guests. They rise more likely from a toothache, 
or the characteristics of some mediaeval saint. And 
the long drives into the hills, which wearied you 
at the time, will assume in memory the charm ot 
dreams. 

Indeed, these drives form by themselves an immense 
attraction to Vescovana. It is true that the Doge's 
Farm is built just a few miles too far away from the 
feet of the Euganeans ; but when this distance has 
been covered, what joy awaits the eager tourist ! 
He will find there a whole set of little cities. Each 
has a tempestuous past written in its archives, and a 
small piazza, arcaded streets, a church, a ruined 
castle. There is Monselice, with its seven holy 
chapels, climbing between cypress-trees up the steep 
hillside. And here is Este, with its villa which 
Byron hired and lent to Shelley ; the remains of 




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O 



A DOGE'S FARM 95 

Its immense castle, now used for the cultivation 
of vines and the weekly cattle-market ; and the 
museum full of a strange nation's tombs. Bat- 
taglia next, with its famous baths, and the villa 
of Cattaia, dear to the lover of armour. Then 
Praglia, Teolo, Val San Zibio, and last, but not 
least, Arqua. 

Petrarch lived his last years and was buried in 
Arqua. But even if this had not been a fact, one 
still must have felt the intense charm of this small 
sleepy hill-town. I saw it last one day in June, with 
an impassioned Southerner, who regarded the expe- 
dition as almost a sacred pilgrimage. Pomegranate 
hedges mixed with privet came bursting over the 
walls, and above were ** banks whereon the wild 
thyme grows.'' We climbed up the steep path 
leading to the poet's house, and left the village 
below us — a very jewel of a place — with brown tiles 
on its roofs, and all its shutters closed against the 
first warm kiss of June. The joujoub-tree grows in 
great abundance there at Arqua : its leaf is of a 
peculiarly fresh and vivid green, and when it casts 
its boughs across a whitewashed wall, one's eyes are 
almost dazzled by the shining vivid texture. The 
day was very hot, and the mists upon the plain 
obscured the vast view over Lombardy which I had 
known here in autumn. Fields and trees melted 
into the heated air like a blue sea, from which church 



96 BAYS SPENT ON 

towers and houses emerged as sails upon its bosom. 
Up and down that steep and pebbly road the women 
went with pails. There seems to be more water at 
Arqua than in all the district of the Euganean 
Hills. 

At last we reached the house of Petrarch. It 
stands high on the hill — a small brown house with 
a loggia and a garden, big iron balconies, and rooms 
all open to the air — a fit abode for any poet, and for 
all sweet souls to sing from. What if it were not 
his house, or if, as the cuslode, with a smiling 
cynicism, said to me in answer to my meaningless 
inquiry concerning the abode of Laura, ** Laura non 
fu mai '' ? This house remains the hearths ideal of a 
poet's home. We climbed the loggia stairs and 
entered the cool rooms. From the north and from 
the south the breezes freely passed and stayed to 
play across the poet's table, and linger round the 
walls where Petrarch wanders still, in fresco, through 
golden paths and sunny meadows, there to meet with 
Laura. 

The tomb stands on the piazza before the church. 
It is a solid block of crimson Verona marble upheld 
by four pillars, simply cut, and on the top is the 
head of the poet cast in bronze and green with 
winter rains. This tomb has the charm of great 
strength and simplicity. Though it has stood there 
in the open air for five hundred years and more, it 



A DOGE'S FARM 97 

is not scarred, and there seems no occasion to enclose 
it with the iron paling which somewhat mars its 
outline. 

Some years ago Petrarch's tomb was opened at 
Arqua, and it was found that bees had made their 
honeycomb upon the poet's heart. This fact was 
related to Countess Pisani by an eye-witness, so 
we may trust its veracity, strangely poetical and 
unreal as it may seem to us. 

I have described the interest of Arqua at length, 
as, if time be limited, it is the place most worthy of 
a visit in the Euganean Hills. Still all these places 
have a personal charm, which is intensified after a 
residence in, or a long drive across the plain. And 
dearer to me than Arqua are the gardens of Val San 
Zibio. This is a fairy plot of ground. A half-circle 
of hills surrounds it. Once the architect of the 
Versailles gardens came to the Euganeans. He left 
behind him a miniature Versailles — a little city of 
hornbeam and of box cut into labyrinths and streets, 
with chestnut-trees for palaces, and a wonderful 
display of marble tanks and fountains. 

To describe one Lombard road were to describe 
all. But as one nears the feet of the hills, a more 
varied vegetation, bred on mountain soil, creeps 
down into the cultivated fields, and adds colour 
or height to their familiar plants. The natural 
impulse of these roads is to run straight. But the 

7 



98 DAYS SPENT ON A DOGE'S FARM 

small properties of our times enforce small angles 
and the consequent break of Romanesque mono- 
tony. The roads are always admirably kept, and 
as they have to be made with great difficulty, owing 
to the want of stone in the neighbourhood, they are 
very solid and firm when once completed. They 
are white and smooth, and your carriage rolls along 
them as though it were upon a city street laid down 
with wood. On either side there is usually a deep 
ditch, which in spring and autumn is filled with 
water, and is always lined with grass and rushes. 
Here, too, you will find loosestrife, forget-me-not, 
flags, and every sort of water-weed ; and over the 
more shaded ditches the duck-weed grows so thick 
you almost think it land, till a flock of new-fledged 
ducks pushes in amongst it, and ruffles the surface 
by a sudden charge of tiny bills. They are a 
pleasing break in the monotony of the road-land- 
scape, these occasional families of little birds ! 
They like to lie along the grassy paths — a flattened 
line of golden fluff, which may remain quiet as you 
pass, or else get up with one consent, and speed 
away before the carriage wheels. Turkeys and 
guinea-fowl are produced in thousands for exporta- 
tion all over this country. 

But I would have no one believe that drives into 
the hills offer the sole entertainment to visitors at 
the Doge's Farm. There are interests at its own 




BACK OF THE CHURCH AT VESCOVANA. 



DA YS SPENT ON A DOGE'S FARM loi 

doors just as great as these, if looked at in the 
proper light. Few things could be discovered in any 
country more impressive than the Lombard harvest, 
and in no corner of that country can it be seen 
to better advantage than in Gromboolia — properly 
the Bassa Padovana — where the soil is particularly 
rich, and has been cultivated for centuries. This 
sight it was my privilege to see. Indeed, I stayed at 
the Doge's Farm for over eight weeks one summer, 
and rarely during that time did I ever drive outside 
the property of the Pisanis — an area of some three 
thousand acres. During that time the " system '* 
which I have described above was broken through. 

In the evening, after dinner, when the house 
was not yet quite shut up, I left the growing ghost 
of fever to the mind of A. There are window- 
ledges on the north side of the hall in the Doge's 
Farm. These ledges are more than three feet 
broad, and the heat of the sunset lingers in their 
stones far into the night. I could creep through 
the sash windows, for the air was not absolutely 
forbidden at that hour, and sit outside, looking into 
the west and hearing the others talk within. Their 
familiar voices only increased the sense of mystery 
in all the country round. The stars came out, 
one by one, in the sky over the acacia-trees. They 
seemed strangely red, and by their light the clematis, 
which grew along the wall, deepened to dull purple. 



102 BAYS SPENT ON 

A sort of throb pulsed through the air, in the owl- 
light ; a laugh of girls on a far-away road, the sound 
of a young man's singing, of birds not gone to 
sleep, and the rumble of trains miles off upon the 
plain. 

The day lingered long in Lombardy at that 
season, fluttering and shaking through the sky ; and 
this hour, so remarkable in the South, has for me 
a peculiar charm. The night may be more glorious 
— calmer and completer ; but twilight is the hot-bed 
for romance and fiction, a thing which '* fascinates 
and is intolerable " — a time when restless souls, of 
youth, at least, go mad. 

Sometimes I went into the garden then. The 
dews had not yet fallen, and the big moths hovered, 
warm and fluffy, among the flowers which open only 
to the night. The geraniums burnt a sullen red, 
the roses were obscured, and the magnolia buds lay 
sleeping white against their leaves. Most flowers 
in the garden swooned. But the ox-eye daisies shone 
like stars among the grass — thousands and thousands 
of them, vying for brilliancy with the fire-flies. 
And that was the hour for the evening primrose. It 
blossomed suddenly, like shaded lamps, all through 
the borders and the dusky alleys of the garden. I 
picked great bunches of this flower — their petals 
were so cool and fresh — their pollen scent divine. 
There was a peculiar fascination in gathering these, 



A DOGE'S FARM 103 

and the daisies together — the two most luminous 
flowers of the garden, which in the day would be 
passed by. For I confess that it was ghostly in 
the garden at twilight, and that my footsteps were 
hurried. They seemed dogged by invisible beings 
whom I could not discern — whom I hastened to flee 
from. I grabbed the flowers, and I regained the house 
with no inconsiderable feeling of relief! But the 
dews of night deepened my delight in the verses of 
Leopardi or of Dante, which I read with A. 

My morning walks were an unmitigated pleasure. 
I rose at early hours, and went into the garden 
when it was yet heavy with dew. How glorious 
were the yellow roses after sleep ! The magnolia 
flowers were limp with slumber, their petals fell 
apart, letting the heavy fragrance go up to meet the 
sun, and the spirea looked whiter in the grass. The 
feathered sprays of tamarisk-trees shivered and sprang 
back as the dewdrops which had held them fell 
away and dissolved with the waters of the moat. 
The tree-frogs basked on the lily-leaves. The 
nightingales were silent. I saw the little brown 
bird, whose magnificent songs had thrilled the night, 
running along hke other birds to breakfast under 
the violet leaves, or find a beetle in syringa hedges. 
But the bushes of evening primrose, so piled with 
bloom in the evening, were bare. Their blossoms 
had vanished with the stars. 



104 DAYS SPENT ON 

Another great, though half-forbidden, attraction 
in Vescovana is the ascent of its campanile, or bell- 
tower. When once the rickety, break-neck stairs 
have been ascended, and the ropes and the clock- 
work safely evaded, there can be no airier nor more 
pleasing resting-place in all Gromboolia than this 
little platform under the bells. Seen from up there, 
Lombardy is grand, and its immensity is partly 
realised. After a great storm it was a joy to climb 
the tower and look upon the fresh-washed plain, 
with the tremendous clouds pouring black sheets of 
rain on the horizon. Also on summer mornings, 
when warm mists lingered round the hills, and the 
sunlight streamed across the waving corn, the place 
was very charming. 

A., however, entertained a particular aversion 
to the performance by other people of a thing 
he himself could by no means accomplish. He 
had his revenge. I shall not all my life forget 
the horror and vexation of a quarter of an hour 
passed late one evening in the campanile of the 
village church. The day had been tempestuous. 
Towards dinner-time the clouds lifted. An im- 
mense desire to breathe the air and see the world 
in the space of ten minutes seized upon my 
friend and me. Quite oblivious of any possible 
danger, we ran out from the house, where we had 
suddenly grown weary of exchanging our views on 



A DOGE'S FARM 105 

the universe, dashed across the piazza, and were 
soon at the top of the bell-tower. The pageant of 
storm which met our eyes was so gorgeous that we 
were lost in the contemplation of its many splen- 
dours. Also the oppression which had hung about 
the Doge's Farm for days had vanished. The air 
was washed by rain ; we breathed it cold, and clear, 
and clean. Huge shadows lay over the chess-board 
at our feet. The men were out, pulling the 
stacks about in the Dieci. The blood of sunset 
struggled forth — red and boiling — from a bank of 
thunder in the west. In the east an immense 
rainbow spanned the earth and sky. What wonder 
that we should ignore the passing of the hours ! 
Suddenly and surely we were reminded of them by 
the clash of the clock at our backs, and the clanging 
dinner-bell in the villa. A horrible stampede and 
scuttle down the wooden ladders succeeded. The 
door was locked. 

The rest may be imagined. I have never forgiven 
A. But he has forgiven me, for he, like other 
mortals, has a vast appreciation of his own wit. 

Besides these forms of exercise and excitement, I 
sometimes took a tramp — such as my nation con- 
siders necessary — through the fields. I was always 
accompanied by the dogs of the Doge's Farm, five in 
number. We enjoyed ourselves extremely. They 
went through the solemn farce of hunting hares, 



io6 DAYS SPENT ON A DOGE'S FARM 

where it is certain none existed, and I of encourag- 
ing them in their folly. These walks were decidedly 
monotonous, and I could never become accustomed 
to the snakes. But the charm of monotony in 
nature is sometimes an hypnotic one. Corn-flowers 
and poppies, poppies and corn-flowers; wheat and 
willows, willows and wheat. There was nothing 
else by the wayside. Yet these things sufliced, and 
it was always with regret that I and the dogs turned 
home. 

Perhaps the most marked change in the '* system " 
was shown in the order of afternoon drives, for the 
victoria was exchanged for a light country gig, in 
which I drove myself when and where I would, 
across uncultivated fields, along the sandy paths by 
the canals, and above the banks of Adige — which 
last, in their magnificence of breadth and sweep, 
rival a Paris boulevard. These drives are stamped 
upon my brain in a manner never to be eff^aced — 
long hours of the afternoon or evening — passed in 
the heart of that country unknown to any tourist. 
It was then that I fully realised the melancholy 
charm of Gromboolia, that I acquired a love and 
admiration both for the land and for the people. 
The one went back to Nature, the other showed 
itself human, and the Bompard way of explaining 
things was proved to be but a pleasing folly. 

I found that no one night or evening was ever 




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DA YS SPENT ON A DOGE'S FARM 109 

really like another, even in the monotony of cloud- 
less summer days. Amongst my notes I have the 
description of one which is typical and true, and I 
give it here. I saw so many, and wished that others 
could share with me the unexampled beauty of that 
immensity of sky and plain — a vast stage with a 
passing pageant of European grandeur spread nightly 
forth, while only one solitary foreign spectator was 
there to mark the splendour of its drop-scenes, its 
foot-lights, and its inimitable ballet. 

" To-night we drove out from the Fontana (one 
of the Pisani farms) late in the sunset. We had 
been called in to visit a sick ox. The administra- 
tion of Epsom salts forced down this huge patient's 
throat through a beer-bottle held by the Oracle, 
with the assistance of Gromboolian cowherds, proved 
a long business. The stable was hot, the scene had 
lost the charm of novelty. What joy, then, to drive 
out into the air ! We passed through the lane, 
where willows and acacia cast a dense shadow, and 
out over the wooden bridge which has no parapet, 
till we came to the road winding along the high 
banks of the Gorzone Canal. This is a delicious, 
quiet place. The sand there lies about six inches 
deep, and it is very soft to drive upon. Small yellow 
water-lilies reared their heads from out the water, 
which already had sunk low, and dwindled from a 
river into a morass. On the banks grew bushes of 



no DAYS SPENT ON 

the lilac vetch, with a mist of dust about its lower 
leaves, and the cool grey blossoms very sweet to look 
at. Here, too, were St. John's wort, white dwarf 
elder, and scarce budding mulleins. 

" All the centre of our sky was shadowed by an 
immense dark cloud. But underneath it the furnace 
of the low summer sun burnt hotly, and mighty 
shafts of fire streamed through upon the green and 
dusky world, gilding its every edge with a warm 
halo, like that of some fair woman's hair. The 
distant Euganeans were green and blue at first, till 
the red fingers of the dying sun caressed them. 
Then they turned to crimson ; and above the 
golden stubble fields we saw the towers of Monselice, 
and the rows ot cypress over Este emerging like 
thin red ghosts against the pallid green. There was 
a pile of darker clouds towards the east, and always 
above our heads the big cloud-curtain grew thicker 
and blacker till its body seemed to encompass all 
but the ends of the sky, where those lines of in- 
tensest light pierced through, flooding the whole 
low land. 

" Small clumps of dwarfish trees, beds of high 
marsh rushes, with only here and there the pinnacled 
thatch of some mud hut to break the interminable 
sweep of country. Then we left the bank of the 
canal, to plunge into more fertile fields, and wound 
over soft brown earthy roads between high hedges 



A DOGE'S FARM iii 

of Indian corn and wheat. In one place we came 
across some cottages, which were buried to their 
chimney-pots in the streaming ribands of maize. 
Thin blue smoke rose out of the tasselled bloom, 
cutting the line of light on the horizon. Above the 
thunder-clouds grew dark and terrible. 

" Every one was going home. The day's work 
was done. The women bore large bundles of 
corn upon their heads and shoulders, the men 
slouched idly by. 

'* The church of Vescovana stood up black 
against the twilight — a thin dark object, painted as 
it were with a fine brush and Indian ink. From 
its campanile there rose and fell the sound of the 
Ave Maria.'* 




SILKWORM. 



CHAPTER V 



MAY WANDERINGS 



IT was in the middle of May, 1892, that we 
returned to Vescovana. Leaving the Roman 
Campagna all ablaze with poppies, and the vine- 
yards full of baby grapes upon the smiling hills of 
Tuscany, we crossed the Apennines and came out 
upon the Lombard plain. No one, it is certain, can 
see the last of that green Arno valley, bejewelled 
with white cities and dark cypress-trees, without 
some pulling at his heart-strings. Mine pulled 
hard enough, and I was therefore startled at my 
own unchanged appreciation of the flat and mono- 
tonous fields which now surrounded us. 

It is quite certain, however, that I was glad to 
return to them on that May evening, although but 
some few days back we had lingered in the star- 



BAYS SPENT ON A DOGE'S FARM 113 

light on the steps of Trevi's fountain, and watched 
the moon rise over Florence. 

I paid the Doge's Farm but a very short visit on 
this occasion, then went straight on to Venice with 
my father. The journey from Vescovana to Venice 
was of a decidedly strange sort. I find a letter 
written about it at the time, and as its contents 
show pretty thoroughly what travelling in Grom- 
boolia may be like, I cannot refrain from quoting 
parts of it here. 

"Venice, May, 1892. 

"Dearest L., — We have just arrived — Father, 
Angelo, and I — in the train and steamer from Padua, 
and I seize this first moment of repose in which to 
write to you. Since last I wrote we have lived 
last days at Rome, seen Florence, Vescovana, and 
Teolo — all this in the space of one week. Ponder 
the fact and admit that my silence is well accounted 
for. Now that I do write I have no notion of 
where to begin my rhapsodies, for they will be 
many. Perhaps the last has been the best. Cater- 
pillars and an apocalyptic horse are easier described 
than Roman temples. 

"When we left Rome we went straight to 
Florence, and enjoyed all the joys of a visit to 
Poggio Gherardo, which house, as I have often told 
you, is one of the most fascinating of all Italian villas. 
Birds, beasts, and orchids, everything to please one in 

8 



114 DAYS SPENT ON 

the outside surroundings, and all the charm of Tuscan 
landscape added on, with delightful society, a bosco 
and a guitar. No one can sing and play Stornelli 
like Mrs. Ross, that is certain. She has got hold of 
the spirit of the people, and there is southern passion 
which moves one strangely, in her eyes and in her 
songs. Sir James Lacaita was staying in Florence. 
He brought two of his Taranto servants up to 
Poggio one afternoon ; and they, and every one 
else, danced the pizzica. It is an extraordinary sort 
of dance. I have its music yet in my head. In the 
evening L. K. and I tried to strip the garden of 
roses. But in vain. Florentine roses have no end. 
The pink cascade flowed on unbroken from the 
villa to the valley of the Arno. We stayed in 
Florence only three nights, thence went on to 
Vescovana. Arriving in that place late at night, 
we were bamboozled into a thousand follies. We 
were forced to drag our weary limbs upon the 
balcony, and peering into the almost absolute dark- 
ness with dusty eyes, to declare we saw marvels in 
the garden, where, as a fact, nothing was visible 
save fire-flies. In the morning, however, miracles 
were disclosed — innumerable mockeries met our eyes. 
(Mr. Blomfield, by the by, ought to feel flattered, 
for his book has made havoc in a Lombard plot of 
ground.) Half of the old field has been turned 
into a * formal garden,' and christened Crispin de 



A DOGE'S FARM 115 

Pass. It is all plotted out with grass, and gravel 
paths, and flower-beds. Gates, balustrades, and 
sweet-pea hedges enclose it. Every one says this 
arrangement is right, that it gives what was needed 
to the architecture of the house. But for my part 
I loved the old way well, and would never have had 
it thus scratched and blotched over. However, it is 
splendidly done, and in a year or two it will be 
overgrown. Biscoccia has run riot with his nastur- 
tium seeds. This plant covers a multitude of 
sins. I do not see why one should resent it. 
A. was in a sad mood, which he declared found 
its origin in a toothache. Also his passero solitario 
has died very suddenly, and the parrot we gave 
him, having bitten him through the nose, is feared. 
All questions put to him are answered by a bow. 
Moreover, he is writing a book. 

'* We had a splendid time, though it was short. 
We went for some long drives, and enjoyed ourselves 
in house and garden. The country has never, per- 
haps, looked as beautiful as after the heavy rains of 
this spring. The floods were still out, and bad in 
places, and K. and I were rewarded for the solito 
tramp towards the Adige by the vision of hundreds 
of lilies shining in the exact centre of ditches some 
twelve feet broad ! So we were forced to return 
empty-handed. We saw the greatest number of 
water-snakes it has ever been my luck (or the reverse) 



ii6 BAYS SPENT ON 

to witness. The water in places seemed full of them. 
They put the idea of paddling after water-lilies quite 
out of the question. Father joined us the second 
day, and he and I and Angelo left Vescovana and 
came on here via Teolo. 

*' Teolo is the highest town in the Euganean 
district. It is an idyll in itself — a perfect dream of 
a little hill town — built in the heart of that country, 
which the old Venetians loved to paint behind their 
saints and their madonnas. We met with awful 
difficulties in arriving there. We took a hired 
carriage from Rovigo, and started at lo a.m. on a 
hot day to drive across the plain into the recesses of 
the hills. Our coachman knew nothing of the way, 
nor had he any intelligence of ways in general. 
The horses were a-weary of their lives before they 
had gone two miles, the day was unutterably baking, 
and Father could not forget that all his manuscripts 
were wandering away alone upon Gromboolian rail- 
ways in a small portmanteau. Angelo roared at 
things in general, as is his invariable custom. 
Having started at ten, we arrived at midday where 
four cross-roads met. We were now absolutely at 
sea, and began our usual inquiries of quite incom- 
petent guides. We had a fixed idea that we must 
reach a village called Vo. * In the name of the 
saints, where is Vo ? ' thundered Angelo into the ear 
of a boy of six. * Where, cara sposa, oh, tell us 



A DOGE'S FARM 117 

where is Vo ? * from the coachman to a pretty girl, 
and, * Where is Vo ? ' all round. The answers were 
so numerous, and so absolutely contradictory, that 
when a gentleman raised his voice above a neigh- 
bouring hedge and roared, ' You are all of you 
wrong ! ' we felt for the first time satisfied. This 
lordly but invisible being then pointed out a new 
direction, and we meekly followed it, toiling back 
along the way we had come. Arrived in a pros- 
perous village we tumbled into its inn and ordered 
a meal. Whilst it was cooking I cheerfully said to 
the landlord, ' This place is Vo ? ' * Oh dear no,' he 
answered me promptly ; ' it is quite a different town.' 
Really this was like some evil dream. However, 
strange to relate, we had struck upon the very foot 
of the desired hill, so took our meal of rice and eggs 
and proceeded up it. Such flowers we found there ! 
Father was compelled, by their beauty, to call a halt. 
Believe me, there was a bank enamelled over with 
white cistus, large geraniums, a new pink orchis, the 
giant shaking-grass, and, joy of joys, great flower- 
heads of the oft-desired fraxinella ! I did wish for 
you. It was horribly hot and snaky on that bank. 
But a contadina with a spade came to the rescue at 
Angelo's commands and dug me up the fraxinella 
roots, whilst I collected as many of the beautiful 
things around me as I could in the time. This 
peasant woman was not surprised at our admiration 



ii8 BAYS SPENT ON 

for the flower, but she assured me she knew nothing 
of its phosphorescent qualities, nor did she in the 
least credit what I said upon the subject. Yet her 
mud hut was surrounded with fraxinella bushes, and 
if there be any truth in the tradition, she surely ought 
to have known of it. 

" We reached Teolo at about three that afternoon. 
The village is perched high on a shoulder of hill 
which joins the mount of the Madonna on to that of 
Pendice and Venda. On either side is stretched the 
plain. Looking down upon it, there is the usual 
strange effect of a summer sea, with church spires and 
scattered villages for sails. It was Sunday. All the 
village was out to gape at us, charming mountain 
men and girls dressed in coarse blue cotton of every 
shade. We drew up before the inn, a large white 
house which seemed composed entirely of windows, 
and very low. ' You can only have one room,' said 
the landlord ; ' the signorina can share it, or sleep 
with my family. There is another room,' he con- 
tinued, when his first proposals were met in silence, 
' but she had better sleep with the family.' He, his 
wife, his grandmother, and daughters were not dis- 
agreeable ; I had nothing to say against them ; but 
the nights were hot. As we ascended the stairs 1 
caught the magic word ' bachi,' and at once realised 
the situation, and that it was a choice of sharing my 
slumbers with the family or with their silkworms. 



A DOGE'S FARM 119 

I of course chose the latter, and was shown into a 
vast apartment containing three pieces of furniture — 
the hugest bed you ever saw, a corn-bin, and an 
erection of wooden beams with layers of thatch 
stretched across it at intervals, containing millions of 
the small grey worm and their accompaniment of 
mulberry leaves. * The smell is not unwholesome,' 
explained our genial host, * and the night air in May 
is hot. You may open your window, but there must 
be no draught.' I liked to watch the silkworms and 
their ways. We then went out for a walk up Monte 
Pendice." 

This hill, unlike the rest of the Euganeans, is 
steep, and composed of rock. It is like a sharp 
spine on the back of a whale — the whale is Venda. 
The summit is crowned by the ruined remains of 
what was once a huge fortress. Very large must the 
building have been, for even now its bulwarks alter 
the line of the hill. Breezes play in and out of sub- 
terranean vaults, calling forth the ghosts of friars and 
imprisoned girls, and amongst the stones and heaps 
of masonry huge tufts of henbane flourish on buried 
bones. Indeed, one feels in a thousand ways that 
Pendice has had a past and that man has turned her 
slopes, her woods and crags, to his own uses. Nature 
has done all she can to cover the scars on the breast 
of this her daughter. But the feeling is there, and 
not lightly will chestnut copse, maidenhair, and a 



120 DAYS SPENT ON 

thousand flowers in the grass efface the memory of 
man. Yet of all the Euganean hills Pendice holds 
the greatest claim to picturesque beauty. We stayed 
long upon her topmost crags, watching the shifting 
lights upon the plain. A small child played around 
us. Her little brown figure was scarcely hidden in 
a short shift. Her bare feet carried her over hard 
rock and into chilly caverns, from which she started 
laughing, to roll upon the sunny turf and catch at 
ivy-berries. She had gathered all the smiling sides 
of Pendice into her face ; they shone in her charming 
brown eyes and rippled through her hair. She had 
a brother, a white goat, and a dog, and lived with 
her parents in a corner of the castle, which had been 
covered in for their use. It would have been impos- 
sible to find a thing more young and charming than 
Giacinta. She made a deep impression on me, and I 
shall often wonder what the after-life of that girl 
will be who was bred in the romantic regions of 
Pendice. 

We returned to our inn at sunset. During supper, 
which we ate in the passage, three gaunt peasant 
women stepped into my room and proceeded to feed 
the silkworms with mulberry leaves, which they 
scattered thickly over the little creatures. For some 
caprice — I think to see the lights of Padua — my 
Father and 1 determined to ascend another hill that 
night. The sky was clouded over, there was no 



A DOGE'S FARM 121 

single star. I shall not easily forget the manner in 
which we toiled and stumbled over rough paths and 
up grass banks. The only objects which I can 
remember out of the expedition were glow-worms 
and carraway flowers, and Angelo's screams as he 
made a fresh ** tombola." 

" So well did I sleep that night amongst the silk- 
worms, that when aroused at five I was glad to see 
a thick mist creeping in through my windows, which 
quite put a stop to the ascent of the Madonna we 
had contemplated. I therefore went to sleep again. 
There was no milk or butter in the inn at Teolo. 
Black coffee with raw eggs is, I suppose, very whole- 
some — it isn't nice. The landlord had gone to 
market ; only the grandmother was at home, and 
she asked my Father to draw up a bill as she had no 
views on the subject. This he did, greatly to his 
loss, and by seven we managed to get off in a 
country carriage to Padua. A more rotten or a 
dirtier framework, pulled by a sillier sort of animal, 
it was never my luck to ride in. However, we were 
made to feel that we ought to be extremely grateful 
to have it got out for us at all. Father, Angelo, 
myself, our hold-alls, and a typical Teolian clown, 
crowded into its intricacies and shambled away in 
the damp morning through avenues of endless plane- 
trees. It was a sleepy drive. Our driver had no 
eyes or ears save for the fair sex, whose bows he 



122 DAYS SPENT ON 

sought by looks, and whose love he won by roses. 
On one occasion a lovely girl darted from a deserted 
palace with a mysterious bundle, which he, with end- 
less composure, tied to the back of his box. This 
bundle swung against our noses during the rest of 
the drive. The clown then got down, and, leaving 
us planted in the middle of the road, began a long 
flirtation with the girl, which only ended when the 
two saw fit. His conduct was of that order which 
baffles the most intelligent, and we were powerless to 
interfere. Once we stopped by a ditch full of the 
grand snowflake flowers, of which I procured some 
roots. Then we jogged on. Covered with dirt, 
dust, and weeds gathered by the roadside, we at 
length neared Padua, but as we passed the exercising 
grounds outside that city we fell in with, and were 
surrounded by, a regiment of horse, and in this 
military fashion did we proceed to those ' Halls of 
the Lamp of Learning.* I suppose we looked wild 
and disreputable, for officers and men regarded us 
with undisguised interest and glee. But the worst 
was yet to come. Two custom-house officers came 
up and inquired what goods we were conveying into 
the town. * We have nothing with us except dirty 
linen,* volunteered the imperturbable Angelo from 
off^ his box. The officials seemed perfectly satisfied, 
and thus your father and sister were palmed off upon 
the potentates of Paduan gates as any other set of 



A DOGE'S FARM 123 

rag-bag Jews. The elegant officers dropped their 
glasses, even the subalterns sniffed, whilst their lovely 
horses passed our apocalyptic steed with snorts of 
scorn. Arrived within the city the clown became so 
bewildered by the multitude of fair ladies that he 
quite abandoned all further thoughts of driving. 
Gazing at upper windows where long-haired Paduans 
leaned over marble ledges, he wandered far out into 
unknown suburbs, and we had the utmost difficulty 
in getting him to retrace his steps. Also the horse 
turned his skull hither and thither in indescribable 
mystification. Scaffolding blocked our way, the 
street-boys jeered. By a mere fluke we at length 
drew up before the polished retinue of the Stella 
d'Oro. There we shook the dust from off us — and 
let us after all be frank and own that some of our 
greatest joys are those which can be afterwards 
described to our friends as 'journey tribulations.' " 

After this date I spent some happy days at Venice, 
and in the first week of June returned to the Doge's 
Farm. 




OLEANDER FLOWER. 



CHAPTER VI 



IN EARLY JUNE 

" Quanti immagini un tempo, e quante fole 
Creommi nel pensier I'aspetto vostro 
E delle luci a voi compagne ! allora 
Che, tacito, seduto in verde zolla 
Delle sere io solea passar gran parte 
Mirando il cielo, ed ascoltando il canto 
Delia rana rimota alia campagna ! 
E la lucciola errava appo le siepi 
E in su I'aiuole, susurrando al vento 
I viali odorati ed i cipressi 
La nella selva." 

GiACOMo Leopardi, "Le Ricordanze." 

THE whole air seems burdened with the scent 
of flowering vine upon the pergola ; the minds 

of the mosquitoes have been dulled to stupor in the 

124 



BAYS SPENT ON A DOGE'S FARM 125 

house by the oppressive perfume of much lavender 
strewn in the linen cupboard. 

There is an overwhelming sense of Nature's 
honey-pot being opened to the first long suns of 
June. 

All round the church in the priest's garden you 
feel the honeysuckle, and long before you can see its 
yellow streamers you know it to be there, twining 
with the fainter jessamine. There is a wild distrac- 
tion about the roses in this season too — each one is 
vying with another for scent and colour. There are 
small trees of white roses. They are weighted to the 
ground about their feet by clusters of the blossom, 
looking like trees in an Alpine summer, bowed to 
the earth by a storm of snow. 

Privet and acacia shadow all the roads. The air 
is literally made stuffy by the intense fragrance of 
those white blossoms. He who has not passed 
through avenues of slim acacia-trees in early June 
can scarcely realise what a fair blue sky he lives 
under. I think nothing magnifies this blue so much 
as a white shower of that flower-snow above our heads. 

And then the birds ! The passion of the young 
spring's courtship may have died out of their song, 
but another joy has entered with the repose of heat, 
and all day long you hear them sing, till with 
the hush of evening the small ones cease — all save 
the nightingale ; and with the night there comes 



126 DAYS SPENT ON 

across the fields of corn the cry of little owls at 
play in the light of the moon, and of crickets and 
innumerable frogs. 

No new words can convey to the reader a concep- 
tion of the sounds and sights in those Italian nights : 
Leopardi did this once and for all in the few lines 
quoted at the beginning of this chapter. 

Sometimes I defied the fever-ghost, and sat out 
on the stone ledge of my balcony enjoying the full 
delight of those splendours which it was the object 
of every member of the household to shut out by 
bars and shutters. By slowly drawing the bolts I 
was able to emerge, unheard, into the night air, and 
the vision of outside beauty was one which never 
failed to encourage the continuance of this vicious 
habit. Dark carpeted rooms and shaded lamps 
between walls, and outside the calm splendours of a 
Lombard night ! The only penalty I paid was an 
additional '* zooning " round my head at night, but 
these mosquitoes never seemed to bite. The candle 
attracted them, not the people. 

My balcony was an ideal spot. You must go to 
Gromboolia to find another like it : a broad stone 
terrace, paved with scagliola, and crowded with great 
jars of oleander in full flower. Round it runs a 
marble balustrade, and below this the pergola, which 
shadows all the basement. Here roses, vines, and 
many sorts of creepers throw out long streamers to 



A DOGE'S FARM 



127 



meet pomegranite and wistaria upon the southern 
house wall. There, in the hush of those June nights, 
one hears them sing — the happy nightingales. I call 
them happy, for I do not believe that such floods of 
sudden rippling music were ever born of misery. It 




:'->\\[m^ : ■■-■ -->-r±:- 



*> 



all' albera. 



breaks uncalled for into the shadowy world, a song 
of morning before the night is well begun. 

I spoke of a hush, but this is scarcely true, for 
there is no silence in the nights, only a sense of sound 
suppressed. There is a hum, a stir, a feeling of a 
life lived always after the setting sun. First, very 
many miles away, the faint hum of the masses ; 



128 DAYS SPENT ON 

then, nearer, the distinguishment of all the several 
sounds. Frogs, and the small owl who cries like a 
wailing child, and the bigger owl who ruffles his 
heavy wings among the "trees, and calls aloud with 
tremulous hooting ; bats, flies, the click-click of in- 
terminable crickets, almost the moving of fire-flies in 
the grass, and the muffled squeaks of baby swallows 
talking in sleep below the eaves. Above, the big 
round summer moon, climbing over a clump of 
cedars in the garden — so big, so round, it covered all 
the heaven with light, obscuring every star and sun 
in the fathomless reaches of the sky. Its rays fell 
upon the rose-leaves by the pergola, and I could see 
the colours of the oleanders. The rose-leaves seemed 
quite white, they shone as though fresh rain had 
fallen on them. And as I watched I saw small 
moths were humming in amongst their flowers — 
brown filmy beings. There was no inch without its 
living creatures. A thin wind ruffled the air and 
stirred the rose-leaves. Sitting very still, I heard 
strange shuffling sounds like that of sudden footsteps 
on the gravel in the garden, and under the arcades. 
Did some old Pisani walk — come back to his farm 
in the form of a polecat, to see how a modern 
dogaressa kept it for him in the nineteenth century ? 
One is well inclined to believe strange and unlikely 
things when living in large lonely villas upon the 
Italian plains. 




cardinal's umbrella. 

CHAPTER VII 

THE MELANCHOLY OF THE PLAIN 

" Et dans cet horizon, plein de grace et d'ennui." 

Alfred de Musset. 

T^O be truthful, I must state at once that the 

-■• effect of life in this plain seems to be a 

saddening one. I am not speaking of the cities, 

for the people of Milan, Padua, Verona, leave an 

impression of brightness upon one's mind. I talk 

of the absolute country. Its natives have a look 

which the English word " hang-dog " expresses 

thoroughly. Yet this look only applies to the 

expression of their faces. It would be impossible 

to find a set of more sober or cleanly country people. 

Their houses are models of order and economy. 

The most miserable mud hut can be entered at any 

9 129 



13^ 



DAYS SPENT ON 



hour of the day. Its big bed, stufFed with the 
husks of maize, will be spotlessly clean and smoothly 
made, although the hens may be running under it, 
and the turkeys sitting in baskets by its side. There 




LIVING HOUSE, WITH EUGANEAN HILLS AND ALPS IN THE DISTANCE. 

will not be a cinder on the hearth, save in the exact 
middle, where a neat pile of sticks crackle under the 
pot of polenta ; and however poor the inhabitants, 
there will surely be a good show of burnished copper 




COPPER BASIN AND TOWEL. 



pails or platters along the wall. Yet at this point 
any description of pleasing objects has to cease. The 
house is usually composed of two to three rooms on 
the basement — upper storeys are abhorred by the 



A DOGE'S FARM 



131 



native — its walls painted white, and usually composed 
of mud and reeds, the roof made of thatch, and not 




COPPER 



WATER-CAN. 



a flower or a creeper to brighten the eternal vista of 
corn or maize. 







FARMHOUSE AND STABLES. 

There is a saying, and one is almost inclined to 



132 DA YS SPENT ON A DOGE'S FARM 

believe it true, that this land was originally stocked 
with inhabitants from the Venetian galleys. It was a 
miserable and marshy waste, into which no one chose 
to penetrate for personal pleasure or profit. Its owners 
therefore adopted this method of colonisation. Be 
that as it may, the fact remains that the Basso- 
Padovani have some feeling about their land which 
does not make them altogether rejoice in it. There 
is an habitual melancholy about them and their ways 
— a slow inaptitude for work which is deeply de- 
pressing to the exalted demands of the stranger. 

I stayed amongst them through their happiest 
time — harvest ; and although I suppose that in their 
own way they were happy, there was so little out- 
ward appearance of it that I could not remark any 
touch of gladness save in the hours of gleaning. 
The very songs which they sang at their work were 
weighted with a human misery which was almost 
discordant ; and lacking any hope or sunshine such 
as may be reflected back upon a happier soul, they 
almost startled one. 

The hours of work appeared to me to be very 
long. The harvesters began at three and ended at 
seven, with only four hours of rest. 

As a race, the country folk are not good-looking, 
though they all possess the charm of lithe and easy 
movements peculiar to a warm climate. As they 
never wear shoes, their walk has acquired that ease 




~1 1 



CORNER OF A GROMBOOLIAN KITCHEN. 



DAYS SPEN7 ON A DOGE'S FARM 135 

and grace which is so hopelessly lacking in the 
mountaineer. The women, too, have the most mag- 
nificent hair, in which they feel just interest and 
pride. It is a remarkable and pleasing spectacle to 
drive along the roads on a Saturday evening, when 
every cottage lady lets down her abundant locks 




'7- 









_ V 

FARMHOUSE, WITH VINE GROWN OVER THE PORCH. 

before the house door, and has them combed and 
plaited for the ensuing week. They rarely if ever 
do their own hair, though it is an art in which they 
all excel. A carnation, or a sprig of golden-rod 
pinned over the right ear, adds a great charm to this 
coiffure. The hair is always parted in the middle, 
and is usually dark. 



136 



DAYS SPENT ON 



The women grow old before their time, and the 
men's hair turns early white. 

The fever usually begins in August, when water is 
scarce, and green grapes and unripe corn are eaten 
without discretion. It is a dreadful curse, and the 




IN THE VILLAGE OF VESCOVANA. 



fear of it detracts in no small measure from the 
pleasures of a lover of summer nights, accustomed 
to enjoy their splendour hitherto in northern 
climes. 

In the space of twelve months there have been 



A DOGE'S FARM 137 

five suicides in the village of Vescovana alone. 
" Why do you wish to die ? '* asked the priest of a 
doctor's son, who, a few days later, proved the 
strength of his expressed desire. 

" In the life of this place there is no joy of any 
kind. There is never anything new,'' answered the 
unhappy boy. For he was unhappy, through the 
excess of that thing which even in the rush of a 
town-life is called boredom. 

Monotony — that is the best explanation of the 
melancholy I have described : the knowledge that 
all these crops will come and go, come and go again 
in the same field, in the same manner, and that, the 
wages paid, the cattle fed, and the taxes given, there 
will remain of all this plenty but just enough to 
keep body and soul over together till the next 
harvest season, and not one line be altered, not one 
stranger pass, nor ever a hill arise upon this inter- 
minable plain. 




GREEN TREE-FROG. 



CHAPTER VIII 



FLOWERS OF THE PLAIN 



"And nearer to the river's trembling edge 

There grew broad flag-flowers, purple prankt with 
white, 
And starry river buds among the sedge, 

And floating water-lilies, broad and bright. 
Which lit the oak which overhung the hedge 

With moonlight beams of their own watery light ; 
And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green 
As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen." 

Shelley, "The Question." 

'T^HE flora is naturally limited upon this plain, 
-■' where every available inch is cultivated by 

man. As one nears the hills a marked difference is 

138 



DAYS SPENT ON A DOGE'S FARM 139 

seen in the wild flowers. In the heart of Gromboolia, 
however, little variety is found, save in the ditches, 
or along the sides of the canals. Yet Shelley went 
out and made a wonderful nosegay in a ditch, and 
I think there are few flowers more lovely than those 
that grow in water. Apart from these, vetches are 
best represented. There is one with a white and 
lilac blossom. It grows along the dustiest highway, 
clean and fragrant, rising to a bush of sometimes two 
feet in height. Then there is its sister, whose flower- 
head is round, and who delights to climb up out or 
a ditch in company with her yellow brother, the 
water about their feet, and their heads resting in 
the pure light upon the maples or the privet 
bushes. 

White and yellow nymphaeas abound in certain 
parts ; and the yellow iris, arrow-head, bog forget- 
me-not, loosestrife, and flowering rush are every- 
where. The pond-weed grows in great abundance 
both in the ditches and stretches of sandy soil. Its 
flower stalk will measure three feet sometimes, the 
broad, green leaves contrasting strangely with such 
a feathery bloom. Some few salvias, daisy flowers, 
and umbelliferae stray into the grass of the meadows, 
but they are rare. 

The wonder of the flora appears in the first weeks 
of July. It is the convolvulus. Rightly the Americans 
have called that flower the Morning Glory. It was 



140 DAYS SPENT ON 

Walt Whitman who said, "A morning glory at my 
window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of 
books." In the early morning the hedges are literally 
transfigured by this flower. Hundreds and thousands 
of them clamber up the dingy thatch, the gates, and 
all the hedges, or writhe their slender tendrils round 
the wheat, or burst pale buds amongst the stalks or 
maize. It is the large white convolvulus which is 
most abundant : the pink one tries to overcome the 
dust along the edges of the roads — a small pure 
thing, so sweet and clean and bright, you marvel at 
its existence along the smothering highway. 

Another cause for this scarcity of wild flowers is 
the great richness of the soil. It reaches to a depth 
of fifty centimetres, and is so thick and heavy that 
fibrous roots are withered and crushed in their 
attempts to penetrate it. Indian corn and wheat 
grow to a height and splendour which would 
astonish the English rustic. But then he might look 
in vain for the familiar primrose, the cowslip, or the 
periwinkle along these monotonous levels. Here is 
no copse, nor any little rill or flowering lane — always 
and always the cultivated fields. Nor would an 
English horse pull the plough across the sticky sods. 

Early spring, with its violets, must indeed be a 
beautiful time in Gromboolia. I have never myself 
seen it, but find a letter of my sister concerning it, 
and quote from that : — 



A DOGE'S FARM 141 

"Spring here is intoxicating certainly. It comes 
with a burst and fills one's heart and soul with a new 
sweetness. Could you see the violets here, I think 
you would cry. They flood the ground with their 
blue, they nod their little heads and pass away into 
the dark pine shade of the garden. They fill the 
air with strongest scent. Come quickly before they 
die. Every ditch and hedge and dusky bank is alive 
with them. I never saw such a world. The blackbirds 
have been singing so hard — it seemed they must get 
tired. But they never do. And the larks are mad. 
Madame Pisani has just brought in a bunch of 
tulips, gold and scarlet single ones, narcissus too, 
and daffodils. Every day new flowers come out." 

• • • • • 

A great many beetles and birds and grubs inhabit 
Gromboolia, and dragon-flies innumerable. The 
blue dragon-fly is bigger than his brethren. His body 
measures over two inches in length, and is painted 
like a turquoise. The red one is smaller, but so 
brilliant in colour you can see his quivering form 
upon the trunk of the willow-trees from a great 
distance. The green one is so common that I have 
literally seen a small cloud in the air of the garden 
composed entirely of these shining insects. 

If any one felt a desire to study the life and 
customs of the peacock butterfly, he should come 
to these parts in June. Then the pale lilac of the 



142 DAYS SPENT ON 

lucerne fields is all speckled over with large black 
wings, which, lazily unfolding to the heated air, 
disclose those brilliant points of colour so rare in 
other parts, seen in such myriads here. Also in the 
corn-fields, where the purple thistles grow, some- 
times too well to please the farmer, though not 
thick enough to gratify the greedy colour-love of 
painters, you will find the peacock butterflies in 
crowds playing amongst the down. 

There are a good many birds even in this country, 
where the tiny body of a blackcap or the breast of a 
nightingale is considered fit food for a man. I know 
too little of their names to attempt to number them ; 
but wild-duck and water-hen, with sometimes a 
grey crane, are found in the marshes. Doves in 
great numbers, cuckoos, small hawks, and starlings 
flourish in the fields ; whilst every kind of singing 
bird flocks to the garden, together with magpies, 
woodpeckers, and water-wagtails. The butcher bird 
is the most marked feature in the bird foreground of 
Gromboolian landscapes. On every hedge or willow- 
tree you will see his dapper, well-groomed form, with 
the neat grey waistcoat and elegant brown wings, 
the black ear-caps and smoky wideawake, so well in 
keeping with the surrounding tone of colour. I have 
never been able to see him at his work of impaling 
beetles, but there is a murderous determination about 
his little eyes. 



A DOGE'S FARM 143 

Frogs are the peculiarity of Lombardy. The 
very causes which prevent the existence of other 
plants and animals make theirs a joy. The country 
is simply laid out for them. In June nights they 
raise their voices over the entire land — the whole of 
North Italy seems composed of frogs. In July their 
voices are still, but the tadpoles leave the ditches in 
which they have been reared, and when you walk 
along the roads or fields it is brought home to you 
pretty thoroughly in what manner the Egyptians were 
plagued. Hundreds and thousands of small black 
objects hop off at your approach. The green tree- 
frog is undeniably a fascinating reptile. On every 
tree, and on the leaves of rushes, you will find his 
small body, green as the grass, pressed tight against 
his seat. The keen black eyes twinkle, the little 
white sides throb. Entranced, you try to pick him 
up, and off he jumps across the ditch to balance on 
some waving stalk or rush. You cannot believe that 
this small shining emerald will, as night falls, produce 
those deep and guttural sounds which almost over- 
come the songs of nightingales, and pall on the 
sensitive ear. Perhaps Nature has created nothing 
more fragile or more lovely than the baby tree- 
frog. 

There are quantities of water-snakes in all the 
ditches. As you walk along you see a small head 
passing over the weeds and water, with behind a 



144 DA YS SPENT ON A DOGE'S FARM 

long and writhing body — grey-green and speckled. 
Others may sing the praises of the water-snake : 
he fills my whole soul with repulsion, although 
I know him to be as harmless as the lovely baby 
tree-frog. 




T'AMO PIO BOVE 



"I love thee, pious ox; a gentle feeling 
Of vigour and of peace thou giv'st my heart. 
How solemn, like a monument, thou art ! 
Over wide fertile fields thy calm gaze stealing. 
Unto the yoke with grave contentment kneeling, 
To man's quick work thou dost thy strength impart. 
He shouts and goads, and answering thy smart. 
Thou turn'st on him thy patient eyes, appealing. 
From thy broad nostrils, black and wet, arise 
Thy breath's soft fumes ; and on the still air swells 
Like happy hymn, thy lowings mellow strain. 
In the grave sweetness of thy tranquil eyes 
Of emerald, broad and still reflected, dwells 
All the divine green silence of the plain." 

Translated from the Italian of Carducci, by Frank Sewall. 



WTHEN Count Almoro III. died he left the 
^ whole of his property and the entire manage- 
ment of it to his wife. This lady knew nothing 



10 



145 



146 BAYS SPENT ON 

of farms or farming. She had lived her life 
hitherto wholly in the villa, or driving her ponies 
away into the hills during the months which she and 
her husband spent on their Italian estate. Her care 
had been for her house and garden. She left the 
bailiffs and tenants to her husband. 

Armed with the peculiar intelligence of a woman, 
common sense, and a deep human sympathy — also a 
considerable love of command — she entered upon her 
new duties. They were certainly not light ones, nor 
had the way been well prepared tor her. The first 
thing which she realised was that the oxen were the 
chief feature — the absolute necessity in Lombard 
economy. Therefore care of her stables was her 
immediate duty. Of Pisani cattle there were then 
but twenty on a territory of 3,000 acres ; and ten 
oxen are considered the right number to plough sixty 
acres in those parts. The only hopeful side of this 
apparently desperate matter was that the Pisani breed 
was famous for its strength and beauty. Most ot 
the Contessa's land was in the hands of peasant 
tenants. She received small rents from these people, 
whose object it was to strain her ground in every 
possible way, and weaken its powers of production 
through narrowsightedness. It may be imagined 
that her income from the estate was small indeed 
when the taxes and everything else had been paid, 
and there is no one who will not admire and marvel 




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A DOGE'S FARM 147 

at the power and energy of this lady when they hear 
that after twelve years of her personal management 
the Pisani estate can number five hundred head of 
cattle, and that nearly all the farms are in good con- 
dition in her own hands, managed by herself through 
bailiffs whom she selects and pays with the produce 
of the land. All this without further capital than 
the land itself — putting back yearly what she takes 
out. At the time in which I write the Pisani estate is 
reckoned one of the best managed in that part ot the 
country, and the stables are considered as models 
which people will travel far to see. Englishwomen 
are said to be capable of wonderful things. Certainly 
I have met one at least in a remote corner of Italy 
whose life Vv'ork is no trifling matter. 

Wearisome to a degree, tiring and apparently 
unprofitable, is the round of great and small affairs 
which pass through that single head and are settled 
by that single hand day after day, season after sea- 
son. From the choice of a bailiff to the dismissal of 
a cowboy, from the building of an outhouse to the 
summons of a neighbour to the law courts, nothing 
is too hard nor yet too trivial for her notice. She 
designs her stone-carts, she selects her sugar. She 
orders the dinner, and she receives at it an empress 
or an engineer. Nothing is too small, and certainly 
nothing too big, to be decided by this autocrat ot 
Gromboolia. In consequence of which facts strange 



148 DAYS SPENT ON 

stories circulate about the lady and her kingdom in 
other parts of Italy. 

It was said in Florence that when population 
threatened to decrease on the Pisani estates, their 
mistress summoned all the unmarried youth of her 
farms under the barchesse of Vescovana, there 
divided them into rows, regarded their features, and 
summed up their characters in the space of some 
minutes, then made a match and decreed the imme- 
diate matrimony of those pairs she had selected thus : 
*' You, Celeste, shall marry Tabarro. Your figure 
is tall and slim, his is broad and firm — you will pull 
along together. And you, young Gallo, can take to 
yourself Maria. She is a good cook, though she is 
fat. You will submit to her rule, for you are rather 
weak-minded, and you will poach no more in my 
ponds. You two there have black and yellow hair, 
and will match very well together/' &c., &c. The 
story went that these matches were at once com- 
pleted — the word of the Contessa being law. 

I need scarcely say that there was no more truth 
in this than in any other gossip of the like nature. 
A mustard seed dropped by the roadside had produced 
a forest of oaks. That the mustard seed did drop I 
cannot deny, for it is certain the Contessa takes a 
lively and patriarchal interest in the concerns of her 
people, and that the older ones ask her advice in the 
love affairs of their children. I know this for certain, 



A DOGE'S FARM 149 

having been present at like strange discussions, mar- 
velling at the unparalleled candour and unconcern 
with which delicate topics were handled. Indeed the 
voice of the mistress is raised as surely over the ques- 
tion of whether Joanna shall or shall not keep com- 
pany with Umberto, as of whether corn has or has 
not been stolen from the threshing-floor. No one, 
however, must believe that the Gromboolians are 
a race without romance. This people's nature is 
capable of passionate attachments and immovable 
loves. I know the story of a girl whose lover had 
forsaken her in spring. In summer she fell sick 
of heart-break. In the fall of the year she died. 
The Contessa went to see her during her last illness. 
*' The autumn air is chill and damp. It is dreary 
for you and sad,'' she said. " Oh, no," answered the 
dying girl, " I am fond of the autumn, for then the 
leaves are fallen from the trees, and I can watch 
the window or my love." 

Yet this lover had proved false to her, and for the 
loss of his love she died. 

I shall not forget the extraordinary episode which 
I witnessed one morning in Gromboolia. It was a 
dead hot day — hotter than any other day I had yet 
awakened to. All the same, we went out into it at 
about eleven, for there was a hitch in the threshing- 
machine at the Pioppa which the Contessa's presence 
was expected to mend. The Pioppa, so called 



ISO DAYS SPENT ON 

because of a certain poplar-tree which shadows its 
well, is one of the smallest farms on the estate. It 
is nearly eight miles from Vescovana if one drives to 
it in the Calais-Douvre along Napoleon's road ; but 
if one is mean, and the conductor of gigs, one can 
approach it by a very narrow bridge spanning the 
Gorzone Canal. This the Contessa consented to do 
on that hot morning, and so she travelled incognita, 
and the youth of the Doge's Farm went its wicked 
way regardless of her presence. No one ever paid 
the slightest regard to the gig, which usually con- 
tained nothing further than a mad "Inglesina" and 
a servant. They never dreamed that the padrona 
herself would condescend so far as to drive in it. 
When we came to the hill below the canal we 
stopped to adjust some bottles of Epsom Salts packed 
at our feet. A girl was leaning over the bridge. 
She was a beautiful creature, though small and 
delicate — of fifteen summers, not more. Her black 
hair fell in heavy locks over her moody brow ; her 
slim figure bent like the willow in the waters below 
her. All the melancholy of the plain was gathered 
into her eyes. I watched her curiously, and pointed 
her out to the Contessa. A young man with a great 
swagger and of considerable beauty ran up the dusty 
road. The girl watched him coming, and as she did 
so an extraordinary joy mixed with anguish swept 
over her. The young man kissed her. Then he 



A DOGE'S FARM 151 

passed on, swinging his tall and handsome figure in 
the noonday heat. He never looked back to the girl 
on the bridge. 

" Are they engaged ? " asked the Contessa of an 
old woman crouched on the threshold of a neigh- 
bouring farm. 

" No, Signora Contessa. He loves another girl." 

" Ah ! She alone is innamorata^ then } '* 

" Yes." 

(This was only too evident.) 

" Hola ! " said the Contessa, as I whipped Bandis 
up the hill. ** Ton love that brie cone when he does 
not love you — dorit ! " she decreed from under the 
awning of the gig as we passed the unhappy girl. 
*' And you," she called, in pursuit of the gay 
deceiver — *' you shall never kiss one girl in my 
property when you really are in love with 
another ! " 

I believe if this imperious lady owned Westminster 
she would attempt to control its slums. She com- 
plains that her people do not obey her, but they at 
least ask her opinion of their most trifling concerns, 
and she rules them in a marvellous manner. There 
is no single one of her farms which is not kept in fit 
order for her critical eye to survey it at any hour 
of the day when she may choose to turn up. And 
she does turn up regularly in the course of time. 
Nothing escapes her notice, from the extra hen 



152 



DAYS SPENT ON 



poaching in her crops to the last batch of kittens 
squealing in the hayloft. 

When Madame Pisani assumed the reins of office 
her farms were in a state of abandonment and decay 
which no one can imagine who sees them in their 
present prosperity. Her husband had expended 




FARM OF THE MANFREDINI. 



all his energy In draining the land and clearing off 
the mortgages. So she reaped this advantage from 
labours which are none the less because they show 
so little. She at once set to work to clean out the 
filth of the Augean stables, to pull down and rebuild 
their ill-planned and decaying walls. The low roofs, 



A DOGE'S FARM 



153 



the stuffy, ill-drained floors, were exchanged for high 
beam-ceilings, with barns above wherein to stack the 
hay, and clean stalls and pathways down the middle. 
Each stall has a neat open window before it to rejoice 
the large inquiring eyes of its inhabitants and keep 
them bright. Through these little windows you can 
see tiny silhouettes of distant trees, and sometimes a 
faint blue Euganean hill is framed between the horns 




STABLES, FONTANA. 

of a Lombard ox. Outside the row of windows runs 
an awning of rush matting to obstruct the hot rays 
of summer suns and check the frosts of winter. At 
either end of the stable there is a big door kept 
always open to admit the sweetest air. A blue 
cotton curtain hangs across this entrance. Big 
bunches of mint and willow dangle from the ceiling 
and attract the meddling flies. The cowherds' beds 



154 DAYS SPENT ON 

are built into the middle stalls — broad wooden ledges 
like the berths of a ship — stuffed with hay, and pink 
check pillow-cases. An image of Saint Anthony — 
the patron of the stables — a calendar, or a Saint 
George, are nailed to the wall above, and opposite is 
the toilet-table of the oxen. Here hang the long 
light yokes, the shining chains and crimson ciapog- 
Here. The stalls are always very clean, the straw in 
them is dry and rustling. You can go and sit in the 
big smooth mangers and caress the baby calves. 
Indeed the stables on the Doge's Farm are pleasant 
places. Hours I have spent in them, studying with 
love and admiration their soft-eyed inhabitants. The 
great beasts rarely get excited, and they like to be 
caressed by man. They very easily learn to love 
one, and turn huge heads to meet caresses just as 
willingly, I vow, as salt or hay. Their spreading 
horns, measuring from two to three feet across, are 
admirably controlled, unwieldy though they seem. 
They rarely jerk them up, and when you stroke 
them they are warm and smooth like silk. Also the 
oxen know their names — their wonderful classical or 
modern English names. *' Gladstone " and " Homer," 
" Cymbeline '* and " Alcibiades," draw up their 
colossal haunches and arise from their knees when 
called. And I must here put in a word for the 
extraordinary intelligence of the abused Gromboolian 
cowherds, who, totally unable to read or write, can 



A DOGE'S FARM i55 

yet learn off a string of these strange titles which 
convey no single meaning to their ears. 

Madame Pisani tells me that when first she came 
to Vescovana the cowherds imagined that they could 
pay her no greater or more signal compliment than 
by calling one of their cows " Contessa." There- 
fore, when walking in the fields one day, she was 
arrested by yells of ** Contessa/' These, however, 
she found to be addressed to a beautiful white cow 
ploughing in the neighbouring stubble. She tells 
me also that under the Austrian Government a 
cowherd, called Magrin, was had up before the 
police for naming his bull ** Imperatore." The poor 
man said in self-defence, and to the general amuse- 
ment of the court, *'Che credeva onorare sua Maesta, 
perche il tore era bellissimo ! " 

There is an immense dignity about the bulls and 
oxen. The young cows are somewhat more wayward ; 
they jerk about, shrug their shoulders, or hide their 
pretty faces when you come to speak to them ; with 
age they too acquire a greater calm and courtesy. 
The " beauty " of the last season betrays a soft and 
saddened light in her lustrous eyes with the advance 
or years. " Roma '' was the reigning beauty when 
first I came to Vescovana. Oh ! just wasn't she 
vain and fickle, and how contemptuously she snorted 
when we gave her salt ! Now Roma has brought 
up five fair daughters, and turns to welcome me as 



156 DAYS SPENT ON 

quietly as does the big *' Magnifico." " Pistoja " 
champed up Roma's crown of roses, and this year 
the flowers of beauty wreathe " Lottina's " brow. 

From their birth down to their death these 
creatures are treated with kindness and considera- 
tion by their mistress, who never wearies of seeing 
to their comfort. When they are three weeks old 
they are taken from their mothers, who have to 
return to work, and can no longer nurse them, and 
they are put into one of the " schools.'* Some neat 
black mountain cows of staid and genteel behaviour 
superintend the creche. This jeunesse doree of Grom- 
boolia has a very fine time of it in childhood, sporting 
at ease in the broad meadows, with the willow hedge 
allotted to its use. " Let them enjoy themselves and 
romp and stretch — grow tall and strong," says their 
mistress. " There will be time enough for care and 
work later on." One of the pleasing spectacles upon 
the Doge's Farm is that of the inmates in a pensionndt 
de demoiselles playing about and kicking up their 
heels at sundown before they are sent to bed. 

At the age of three the young people are " brought 
out," and this is no less an occasion in that line of 
life than it is in ours. The great decision has then 
to be made of who shall be coupled with whom, and 
this is an extremely important matter — much more 
so than the appointment of partners in a ballroom, 
for the couples now chosen will work together for 




H 
< 
< 



< 

z 

a 
X 
o 



A DOGE'S FARM 157 

life. No single piece of work can be performed by 
one alone ; even the garden-roller must be pulled by 
a pair. One would be absolutely lost without the 
other. Sometimes, after all the toil of selection, it 
will be found that " Olina," say, refuses to pull with 
" Tennyson," and all the trouble begins again. Or, 
as sometimes happens, the one dies first, or a change 
is made absolutely necessary on a farm. Then the 
big beasts become moody beyond words and halt 
heart-broken. It would, however, be exaggeration 
to state what I have often heard reported as a fact, 
that these Italian cattle die upon separation. That 
would be a very rare and hardly likely occurrence, 
though their affections are undeniably deep. 

No artist could paint on canvas, or writer tell in 
prose, the charm of Italian oxen, nor could a poet 
sing the beauty of their eyes. One thing is certain : 
the plain would be a desert without them — a heaven 
without its saints — a meadow void of flowers. It is 
a grand sight to see them adorned in all their best 
and brought out for show to visitors at Vescovana. 
On certain occasions some of them are harnessed to 
an immense van painted pale blue, like a bird*s egg, 
and hung with crimson cloth. In this extraordinary 
erection there are wooden seats on which the privi- 
leged guests may sit and be drawn in triumph 
through Gromboolia, all heads uncovering before the 
mighty car of Juggernaut, 



158 DAYS SPENT ON 

It is a most cruel thing to force more work out of 
these patient animals than natural laws have proved 
to be good for them. Because of their immense size, 
they move slowly, and easily tire during the heat of 
the day. As I have before said, eight or ten oxen 
can do the work of sixty acres. The Pisani farms 
have most of them about a hundred and twenty 
acres of ground, so there are from fifteen to twenty 
oxen on each. A fourth part of the land goes to 
support the oxen, who are fed upon lucerne and 
clover mixed with straw. Green grass they rarely, 
if ever, get, yet it is their favourite food. They 
love it very much, and the eyes of the most modest 
ox will water and his big nose tremble when a bundle 
of sweet young maize stalks is brought to him after 
his hot ploughing in the fields. Many joyful minutes 
did I spend along the hedges by the yard, tearing up 
those much desired dainties, and bringing them into 
the mangers of my big and kindly friends. Such 
snorts, such muffled cries and swishings of the tails 
ran down the length of a whole stable when I entered 
with the cowboys carrying these adored but little 
tasted delicacies. I could go into the stalls of the 
strongest bulls and oxen, and feed them with my 
hands to see that justice was maintained and the 
grasses duly shared. They welcomed me with 
extreme though eager kindness. Their manners 
were as excellent as those of modern youth are often 



A DOGE'S FARM i59 

bad at the pastry-cook's or dinner-table. As for the 
Contessa — they all love her and know her. They 
often scream with joy when they hear her footstep in 
the doorway. 

The bulls have beautiful brazen coverings to their 
horns. These shine in the light when they are 
ploughing, and attract all eyes to admire the beauty 
and grandeur of their wearers. Magnifico is the 
finest bull on the Pisani estate, and indeed he is 
worthy of his name. He lives at the Carbonara ; 
he was born and bred in the property ; there is no 
bull in all Gromboolia like him. I ceased to admire 
any other bull to the Oracle when I met them on 
our wanderings, for they never combined all the 
beautiful points of Magnifico. His head is huge ; 
he has a fine black fringe which curls upon his 
kindly brow ; his horns are not too long ; there is 
a grey tinge like shot satin on his coat, and when he 
walks — well, you need not be ashamed of crying 
out in wonder at his stately and imperial carriage. 
Pistoja, the beauty of the last season, and Plon Plon, 
the large and satisfactory ox, inhabit the same stable 
as Magnifico, and Elvira is the daughter of its cow- 
herd. I always connect the two together — the big 
Gromboolian bull, and the little Gromboolian girl. 

I cannot pass Elvira by, nor ever forget her. 
Some day, in dreams, I shall see her come along 
some shadowy path, bringing the sunlight with her, 



i6o 



DAYS SPENT ON 



and hear again her brown feet softly pattering along 
the grasses under the willow or the chestnut hedge, 
as I heard them when she came to meet me on 




WELL AT THE PIOPPA. 



summer days through the thick dust and the evening 
glow. Elvira is an altogether perfect creation ; she 
is so fat, so round, so very amiable — small and shining 
like some baby buttercup. There is no fault to find 



A DOGE'S FARM i6i 

in all her little form. Her dry, brown hair, always 
dusty at the tips, is bound around her head in two 
tight braids. It breaks in tiniest curls across her 
low and sunburnt forehead, which is smooth like 
chestnut fruits just opened. When she smiles her 
teeth are like seed-pearls. There is a little hollow 
where her fat neck joins her pretty shoulders. She 
often shrugs her shoulders lightly, as though to 
show that the trials of life are very tolerable. Fine 
ladies might come to school with her for graces. I 
do not know why Elvira liked me first. I almost 
feared it was the silver beasts upon my chatelaine 
which so attracted her, or the portraits of familiar 
cocks upon my fan. She had, however, no taste for 
finery, and when we walked together, hand in hand, 
we regarded each other's eyes. Hers were large and 
extremely dark and grave, but all the sweets of 
Gromboolia had entered them and filled them with 
intelligence and brightness. She was dressed with 
simplicity, and an extreme neatness was always 
shown in her attire, which consisted of a tight 
bodice laced at the back, a chemise, and several 
cotton petticoats. She used to stoop and pull her 
short skirt very decidedly over her bare ankles, then 
curl out her funny toes, and pin her kerchief with 
precision across her neck. Once I gave her a gown. 
" I prefer the colour red," she said distinctly. I 
bought it at the Friday fair, and carried it to her in 

II 



i62 BAYS SPENT ON A DOGE'S FARM 

a hurry late one evening. " My grandmother must 
buy me the lining," she said gravely. Elvira had 
only smiled on six short summers, and I, who had 
known twice that number more, had forgotten it. I 
brought her a little bone image of Saint Anthony, 
which she pinned to her bodice by a bit of silk and 
afterwards lost. '* You should have hung it round 
your neck," I suggested. " That," she answered, 
"is no longer our fashion." For whole days she 
sought among the sand-heaps and ploughed fields 
for her lost saint, and the smile was lacking in her 
eyes. Don Antonio sent her a silver medal, but she 
did not love it. One day she found Saint Anthony, 
and after that she ignored the fashions. 

Two weeks ago Elvira sent me a present by my 
father — a little bunch of double daisies and Indian 
marigolds done up in a bit of paper. Not all the 
chrysanthemums from the Doge's Farm could please 
me more than these dwarf blossoms tended and 
picked in the heart of Gromboolia by that little 
Gromboolian girl. 




doge's cap. 



CHAPTER X 

A GROMBOOLIAN SERENADE 

T HAVE compared the Doge's Farm to Tennyson's 
^ '' Palace of Art," but unlike the " Soul " in that 
poem, mine found small joy in ** singing my songs 
alone." Be it indeed confessed that my desires 
went out with the 

"... darkening droves of swine 
That range on yonder plain." 

In our magnificent but solitary drives I longingly 

looked at the high walls round the villas of our 

unknown neighbours, and knew their oleanders 

bloomed not a whit less sweetly than did those upon 

my balcony, and I saw that their strange gigs and 

conveyances were pulled by ponies no less pretty 

than the one 1 drove. 

163 



1 64 BAYS SPENT ON 

The vulgar desire of a tourist — the feverish wish 
to know about things and people — had even tinged 
my joys with minutes of discontent. I was inwardly 
assured that Gromboolia was not an uncivilised and 
barbarous waste outside the limits of the Doge*s 
Farm. I was aware that it had its society, its 
fashions, and its conversation. Uninteresting though 
the bulk of these might possibly prove to be, I still 
desired to turn its pages, and to read them with my 
own inquiring eyes. This desire was to be fully 
gratified. 

One Sunday afternoon we started out as usual to 
visit farms. As we approached the village of Stang- 
hella a clash of brazen instruments announced the 
presence of a band. I felt greatly excited. Often 
as we had passed and repassed that piazza we had 
never heard a sound like this. Stanghella had struck 
me as something of an Egyptian catacomb, peopled 
with handsome mummies, and swathed only in the 
melancholy pealings of its plane-trees. To-day there 
was noise, bustle, and a crowd. My spirits and 
those of my Southern friend rose to the novel 
sensation. As our carriages traversed the crowd, the 
sindaco, or mayor, of Stanghella stepped forth from 
the steps of the municipio and begged the Contessa 
to grace the performance of their new musica by 
her presence. She consented. In the late evening 
we returned from the farms. We drew up before 



A DOGE'S FARM 165 

the municipio, and alighted on the steps of that 
mysterious mansion whose grim and ugly facade had 
often excited my curiosity. We marched in state 
up the echoing stairs, and were put upon seats in its 
huge and empty hall. We were horribly select ; we 
sat on tilting chairs beside the window — that is to 
say, my chair tilted in my eagerness to see. We were 
grouped in a semicircle ; the sindaco and his wife, 
the postmaster (a youth of great elegance), the bailiff 
of the squire, and the schoolmistress formed the 
audience. It was an extremely hot evening, and I 
for one felt far from happy put up there to public 
view, with my admired popolo so far below me. I 
was in full sympathy with the young lady who said 
that she " hated to be hulched in a caroche." I 
particularly disliked to be hulched in a municipio. 
However, the first step into Gromboolian ** society" 
had been taken. 

Below us there were all the inhabitants of the 
land, crowding round a raised platform where 
the ieunesse doree of Stanghella were standing and 
blowing into new and brazen instruments. That 
the performance was crude one could not deny, 
but that the energy and goodwill bestowed upon 
it surmounted its failure was also the truth. The 
musica had only been started some seven months 
before, and already twenty-eight members had joined 
it, and succeeded in playing in concert. They 



i66 DAYS SPENT ON 

had a maestro from the neighbouring town of 
Rovigo, and the young gentlemen of Stanghella 
encouraged and presided over them. 

" Indeed their performance is admirable," I volun- 
teered to one of our hosts. 

'* Which piece in the programme do you prefer, 
most illustrious young lady ? ** 

" Impossible to select," I cried, for in truth I had 
noted an extreme similarity in the pieces. Then, 
anxious to suggest the right thing, I inquired 
whether they perhaps were acquainted with the 
March of Garibaldi. The question was received 
with a strangely suppressed glee by the circle of 
the select. 

Down went the sindaco into the square, and very 
soon that music which even the youths of Stanghella 
could not deprive of its power of ** go " broke forth, 
and shook down the bark from the plane-trees. 
The multitude roared "5/V, ^/V.'" The ice was 
broken. 

The following day the brass band of Stanghella 
sent in a request to serenade the ladies of Vescovana. 
Vescovana replied that the proposal was accepted. 
The date, the hour, the mode of arrival and of 
departure were elaborately arranged. Unluckily 
I have not got this almost legal correspondence in 
my hands. It would certainly serve to shatter every 
preconceived notion of serenading. For a Grom- 



A DOGE'S FARM 167 

boolian serenade is not at all the romantic moonlit 
affair we all have heard or made for ourselves in the 
mirage of our minds. It is extremely well arranged 
and thought about by unimpassioned swains. 

Two weeks later the event took place. As the 
day drew near an immense excitement throbbed 
through the inhabitants of the Doge's Farm. The 
servants felt that the right thing was about to be 
done — that social amenities were to be received and 
bestowed between themselves and their neighbours. 
The lower rooms were filled with flowers, and carpets 
spread on the steps of the entrance hall. The music- 
stands were placed in the sweep amongst the roses, 
and at 6 p.m. the music arrived — the guests at the 
same hour. We all sat down in great stiffness on 
chairs on the steps. We were again most select. 
There were Signor Merlin and his wife — tenant 
farmers on some Pisani estates ; the president of 
the music, his baliff, the sindaco and his wife, and 
the stationmaster of Stanghella. 

All these people were terribly inquisitive. '*Why 
did you go to Rovigo in the heat of the day.^^" 
** Do you prefer fish to beef.^" and *'Why do you 
come to this country?'' &c. — were the sort of 
questions we became accustomed to hear and to 
answer. 

Into the midst of this circle strayed two English 
ladies, bent upon a Sunday call. They were 



1 68 DAYS SPENT ON 

members of a party of artists who had taken up 
their abode at Teolo in the Euganeans for purpose 
of painting. It was a remarkable interruption, and 
Gromboolia was gratified by the unpremeditated 
compliment. At this minute the music struck up 
— that music where everything seemed trumpets. 
The populace of Vescovana crowded itself against 
the gates. 

The evening was extremely sultry, and all the 
light of the setting sun fell upon our uncovered 
heads. The stationmaster held a flaring red parasol 
over my head in a manner to obstruct the view 
of the orchestra and popolo^ and to concentrate all 
the sun's rays upon the back of my neck. Several 
presidents and conductors of the music joined our 
circle. At intervals everybody ate biscuits and 
drank black coffee, wine, or other refreshments. 
It is certain that the musical side of the serenade 
was the least part of the day's doings in the eyes 
of the audience, and I may almost add of the 
performers. During the longest pause in the pro- 
gramme the whole society turned into the garden 
and wandered through the labyrinths of Crispin 
de Pass, pausing at every bower. The one point 
in this garden which attracted their criticism was 
the sweet-pea hedges. " What ! " cried the bailiff 
of innumerable farms. ** Uneatable peas, and in 
such abundance ! " Then all the gentlemen bent in 



A DOGE'S FARM 169 

amaze over such marked peculiarity of taste on the 
part of an English lady. The cultivation of un- 
eatable peas was a folly they scarcely could credit. 

** Never mind," said the Contessa gently in my 
ear, ** a year hence their gardens will be stocked with 
the same flower.'* She has already -peopled Grom- 
boolia with scarlet-runners. 

A timorous cornet summoned us back to our 
serenade. Unequal valses and smooth mazurkas 
were diligently rendered. Towards the end of the 
performance the stationmaster thought fit to inquire 
of me what were my political views. I replied in 
a loud and cheerful voice that I knew nothing of 
politics, but in sentiment was a Republican. This 
information so excited the stationmaster that he 
jumped off his seat and almost impaled me on my 
own parasol. He summoned the sindaco, and these 
two gentlemen became entirely purple in their 
attempts to disillusion one who had no illusions. 
For it was the fire which the youths of Stanghella 
had put into their brazen instruments when they 
played the Garibaldi March which had excited me 
to the above speech. I had feared their slim forms 
would burst, and that the maestro would fall from 
his tub when the first invigorating bars had been 
commenced. Also the populace roared their delight 
outside the gates. Gromboolians had received fire 
into their souls, and imparted it to mine. 



I/O DAYS SPENT ON 

"Don*t talk of republics, dearest young lady," 
panted the stationmaster : '' suggest the Marcia 
Reale." 

I obeyed, but my spirit groaned as I listened to 
the twaddling and uneventful strains of that royal 
anthem. The popolo^ too, set up a dismal howl. 
Yet I protest it was not disloyalty, but pure musical 
instinct which so influenced our feelings. 

Towards eight the company broke up, leaving us 
with the delightful feeling of having had a '* social 
success." 

That was the last I heard of the '' musica di 
Stanghella," for its performances are extremely rare. 
But later in the season I was privileged to hear a 
little more Gromboolian music. I paid a visit to the 
hills, and returned from them fired with enthusiasm 
for the songs I had heard sung by the people there, 
and with an ambition to know what the young 
men of the plain could produce in the same line. 
A., out of some novel caprice, favoured the plan, 
and invited the youth of his parish to come 
one evening into the barchesse and sing to us. 
They came. The air was hot, the sky was 
clouded over ; it had rained all day. The young 
men stood in the shadow under the jasmine trees. 
Strange howling choruses and songs suddenly 
broke the silence of the night. We stood in the 
balcony above and listened. There was a peculiar 



A DOGE'S FARM 171 

melancholy scream at the end of every verse. I dare 
not call it musical. But barbaric dances clash, and 
yet they charm. So it is with the people's songs. 
I would gladly have listened to those wonderful 
strains for a longer period, but this was not to 
be. It so happened that an upholsterer from Milan 
and a tinsmith of Venice had lately arrived on the 
Doge's Farm. These gentlemen, being themselves 
possessed of no inconsiderable musical talent, rushed 
out upon a scene where they would be enabled to 
show it off to the full. Absolutely regardless of 
the other chorus, they began a rival concert under 
the pomegranates in the opposite harchesse I 

Never shall I forget that night of song ! Its 
discords and discomfort were appalling. 

'* Teresina, Teresina, Teresina ! '' thundered the 
Gromboolians, whilst the wailing voice of the 
romantic tinsmith pierced above their healthier 
choruses, singing the death of an enamoured girl 
in tones which told himself to be a pilgrim in the 
paths of love. 

A hot rain dropped on the pergola. The lamp- 
light struggled with some feeble fire-flies and quite 
obscured them, even as the tinsmith finally over- 
powered my wild Gromboolian chorus. 




cardinal's hat. 



CHAPTER XI 

OLD HOUSES OF GROMBOOLIA 

" I 'HE Stanghella music proved itself a delightful 

^ introduction to Gromboolian society, and 

many happy afternoons I spent in visits to these 

neighbours. Twice we went to tea with friends 

at Stanghella, who own a beautiful house and garden 

at the entrance to the little town. The garden is 

cultivated with extreme care and love, and from 

the burning heat and the dusty plain it was pleasant 

to enter the shady paths, to sit on a smooth, green 

lawn before a pile of ices, or run a race in small 

canoes upon the little sleepy lakes. Indeed that 

garden is a cool oasis, like the one at Vescovana. 

172 



£>AYS SPENT ON A DOGE'S FARM 173 

But both are exceptions to the general rule of villas 
in Gromboolia ; and it is often sad to see how little 
property is respected or cared for nowadays in 
out-of-the-way corners of Italy. Browning's poem 
holds good ; and dear to the heart of modern Italian 
youth are the sounds of the piazza. But this is not 
all, and there are various other and more insur- 
mountable barriers than those of boredom which 
drive the nobles into the towns. 

Yet the ruins of greatness are there still — buried 
out there in the country. As the sphinxes stand by 
.the Nile, so the gems of art and of gardening which 
once were the pride of their owners now fall aside, rot 
as flowers do upon their stalks, but still they stand. 
Even in Gromboolia, which strikes you as being a pure 
wilderness of wheat and maize, you need not go far 
afield. Oh, yes, you will easily find them : the little 
old villas smothered in weeds, or baring their breasts 
to the winter floods and mist. Scrape away the 
grass there on the doorstep, and you will see it is 
carved in no ordinary stone, but from a block of 
exquisite marble. And the glass has fallen from the 
window-frames, but the ironwork which masked 
it is there still, strangely and marvellously wrought, 
embossed perhaps with beaten roses, fretted with 
coats of arms. Grain and straw have been stored in 
the reception-rooms : they have scratched the faces 
of Venetian senators, or bruised the lovely limbs ot 



174 DAYS SPENT ON 

Aphrodite. But enough remains of these ghost fres- 
coes to show you that they once were painted in 
colours bright and pure. 

Then leave the house and push through the rotten 
reed fence into that place which long years ago they 
called the garden. It is a farmyard now, maybe, but 
the box will not be all quite dead which once made 
alleys, and the cupids and the fauns are there still, 
tumbled over without their pipes, without their 
arrows, in the grass where poppies and salvias wave 
above them, and the silly hens croon lazily. 

Everything after all is here, and why complain. 
For which of us would change this desolation full of 
the dreams of "dear dead women." 

When the present Government came in, property 
which had formerly been entailed, and therefore 
treated with love and veneration, was sold out. 
Strangers encamped in precious villas which already 
the finger of Decay had touched, owing to the wars 
and the consequent poverty of their owners. The 
strangers felt no pride in keeping up useless if lovely 
ruins. So long as the walls and roof were firm they 
were contented. Taxes are exorbitant. The land in 
itself proved labour and expense sufficient for them 
to meet. No law bound a hard-driven tenant, con- 
tentedly ignorant of the " Love of the Beautiful,'* 
to support the slender columns which tottered out- 
side his door, or to replace a marble form which 



A DOGE'S FARM 175 

only adorned and did not fatten his garden or his 
vines. 

It is so easy for the passing tourist to criticise and 
to lament. I myself confess to harbouring the domi- 
neering spirit of a crusader in search of holy tombs 
when out in Gromboolia looking for her treasure. 

One morning K. and I drove to TAlbera, a small 
hamlet lying some four miles from Vescovana. We 
had been advised to visit this place in order to behold 
thq only tall tree of all Gromboolia. We went, and 
found the phenomenon — a tall poplar of uncertain 
age and undeniable beauty. For miles one sees this 
tree raising its head above the fields and hedgerows. 
Certainly it was a splendid creature, and its thousands 
of silver leaves shivered in the warm May air. But 
by its side we found something even more attractive 
— a thing which nobody had ever talked about, a 
buried jewel in a perfect setting. This was a villa 
built in such admirable style that it startled eyes 
accustomed to the interminable monotony ot rarms. 
The villa, as we afterwards learnt, belonged to the 
Manfredini, agents of the Este family, who owned 
this land in 1300, one century before the Pisanis 
purchased theirs. Lately the farming of it passed 
into the hands of Marchese Dolfin, of Rovigo. The 
house is like a miniature Venetian palace buried in 
Gromboolia instead of the lagune. Sumach-trees, 
cherries, and maize smothered its marble balustrades, 



176 DAYS SPENT ON 

and swallows had built above its windows where the 
Manfredini lion ramped proudly on, regardless of 
the change in politics and life, rusty but magnificent 
in ironwork (see p. 127). 

Delighted with the scene, I attempted at once to 
sketch it. Then the tenant farmer lounged out and 
entered into conversation with K. He was a tall 
and melancholy man, much thinner than the pointer 
dogs who followed him, and sadder still if that were 
possible. He had the manners of a misanthropic 
emperor. Had he lived in the days of Heliogabalus 
he would have flourished. I felt he might institute 
unhallowed farces at nights within the lonely little 
villa in hopes of some excitement, and then feel more 
weary than before. He waved his long hands sadly 
when we praised his dwelling. He took us in, and 
up the exquisite little staircases, all finished by some 
delicately-minded architect. He gave us odd sweet 
wine in his room, where Garibaldi's portrait hung 
alone among his guns. He tapped despairingly the 
tattered canvases which hung upon the entrance 
walls, treating Zeus, Juno, and the other gods with 
sadness and contempt. His type of melancholy is, I 
fancy, not so uncommon in the minds of those who 
live with ruined beauty. Yet I did not pity the 
misanthrope of the Manfredini villa. I believe him 
to be a privileged being, and in his own way, a happy 
one. 



A DOGE'S FARM 



177 



Then we discovered a second ruined palace, but 
one which was quite unlike the one by the poplar- 
tree. This second was a flourishing farm — Grompa. 
The fine palazzo shown below belonged to the 
Grompas of Padua, who kept their beautiful country 
house in excellent condition whilst they owned it. 
The last of the family was a general in the Venetian 
Republic. This gentleman, being possessed of a 




GROMPA, VILLA ESTENSE. 



gambling spirit, soon dispatched his estate of 
Grompa, and sold the property to Princess Gio- 
vanelli, to whom it now belongs, and who lets it to 
Signor Marchiori of Lendinara. Signor Marchiori is 
a remarkable man. He has a singular love for his 
cattle and animals of every description. He has a 
beautiful English breed of pointers. His horses, his 
fowls, his silkworms, have a peculiar healthy happi- 



12 



178 DAYS SPENT ON 

ness about them, and as for the cattle, they would 
need a better description than I can give them. 
Indeed Grompa was an ideal farm. There seemed 
to be something human in all its beasts, and the two 
afternoons we spent there were times of extreme 
satisfaction. 

The Marchiori breed of cattle is considered the 
best in the country. It is called " Pugliesi," having 
been brought originally from Apulia to the banks of 
the Po by members of the Grimani family, and now 
the breed is preserved at Lendinara by the Marchiori 
family. Some therefore came to Grompa with one 
of the Marchiori brothers. There were seven 
brothers, and they all fought, as boys, under Gari- 
baldi. Our friend looks as though he had done that. 
He is magnificent in his huge felt hat and velvet 
coat ; tall and straight, with the love of the past and 
the love of his land filling his eyes with light. He 
took us all over the house, which, though scarcely 
furnished, and used partly as a farm, is beautifully 
clean and tidy. In one of the top rooms there is a 
fresco showing the house of Grompa as it formerly 
existed, with many colonnades and nicely planned 
parterres. Most of these things have fallen away 
and vanished. Troops of ducks and hens run over 
the once cultivated garden, watch-dogs stretch where 
the statues stood, and vines are grown where once 
there were orange and fig trees. But nothing can 




PRIZE OX OF SIGXOR MARCHIORI AT GROMPA 




PRIZE BULL OF SIGXOR MARCHIORI AT GROMPA 



To face page 179 



A DOGE'S FARM 179 

alter the view of the plain from those high windows, 
or check the swallows and warm winds which play 
around them. 

When we had seen the house we went into the 
orchard, and there the young calves ran to meet us 
when we called, as children would, kicking up their 
pretty feet and whisking with their tails. Then we 
entered the stables. Yes, they were beautiful, the 
Pugliesi cattle, and kind too, and well cared for. 
There was the prize bull. Such a bull ! It was not 
the beauty of his points — I know too little about 
them — but his delightful character which charmed me. 
When his master spoke to him from the doorway he 
began to talk and rub his nose along the manger ; his 
large eyes laughed with pleasure when the hand he 
loved caressed him. 

When we left Grompa Signor Marchiori took 
from his walls the only portraits he possessed of his 
prize cattle, and insisted, with typical Italian cour- 
tesy, on his unknown guest accepting a gift which 
was of unique value to him. Now, however, I am 
glad to have accepted what in truth I did with no 
small sense of shame, for many others may realise the 
beauty of the Pugliesi cattle. 

One day Madame Pisani took us to call on some 
of her tenant farmers at Boara Pisani, which is a 
small village built under the banks of the Adige. 1 
was very glad to see this grand Pisani farm. The 



i8o DAYS SPENT ON 

house is long, and only two storeys high. Its great 
beauty consists in the row of almost colossal columns 
— thirty of them — which, rising from the basement, 
support the barns above the living rooms, and are 
strangely majestic and solemn for such a purpose. 
Indeed I imagine that only in Italy would splendours 
like these have been bestowed, even by an enthusiastic 
architect, on a mere farmhouse. Outside the ar- 
cades there is an orchard of cherry-trees. A troop 
of indolent peacocks swept about beneath their 
branches. The place was ill-kept, ragged, and 
romantic. The peacocks' tails supplied the only 
decorations to the sitting-rooms, and in the top bed- 
roohis turkeys and hens reigned supreme. Yet 
nothing could alter the palatial repose of the great 
building. Its mistress, Signora Merlin, manifested a 
large indifference to appearances by her manner and 
her conversation. She was much too fat to worry 
over " systems " and their annoying details, and 
smiled passively upon all the Contessa's suggestions. 
We sat on a huge divan, all three in a row, drinking 
iced cherry brandy with sponge cake, and that visit 
over, we proceeded to pay another to the old mother 
of Signora Merlin, who lives in another farmhouse 
at Boara Pisani, and simply revels in " systems." 
Indeed Signora Merlin I. is a very remarkable woman. 
No one should leave the Doge's Farm without paying 
her a visit. She is colossal in build, weighing at 



A DOGE'S FARM 



i8i 



least twenty stone. She rarely sits still, and manages 
the whole of a large property, and embarks upon 
numerous hazardous law-suits, quite alone. Her 
cattle rival the cattle of the Contessa, but the two 
women mutually admire each other, and their friendly 
rivalry is pleasant to behold. 



(J^s.^ 




BARCHESSE, BOARA PISANI. 



This spring I returned to Boara Pisani for the 
purpose of drawing its colonnades. All the peacocks 
had left the barchesse and gone out under the 
cherry-trees. I inquired of the nearest cowboy 
whether they could be induced to return and let me 
take their portraits. ** Draw a peacock ! " sniffed 



i82 DAYS SPENT ON A DOGE'S FARM 

the cowboy, with contempt. '* Ah," he suddenly 
added, " there is a beautiful stuffed one in the house 
— newly stuffed at Rovigo, and that I will bring to 
you." He bounded off", and returned in triumph 
bearing in his arms the stiffs, unnatural bird, which 
he placed in my foreground. How beautifully did 
that creature rear its wired head ! I sketched it, and 
returned to my colonnades. Suddenly loud piercing 
screams of fury disturbed the general peaceful hum 
of the farm. The living peacock of Boara Pisani 
had wearied of cherries, and, returning to the bar- 
chesse, espied this gorgeous rival. Instant revenge 
arose in that peacock's heart, and with a fell swoop 
upon the triumph of Rovigo stuffing he tore it limb 
from limb. The sensations of myself and the cowboy 
may be imagined when the owners of the birds came 
out and viewed the havoc. 



CHAPTER XII 



FISHING IN GROMBOOLIA 



nPHE Gromboolian fishing season begins in early 
^ June after the first hay is cut and the banks of 
the canals laid bare. On the day of the first fishing 
the sky was of a pale blue colour. Not a cloud, and 
very hot and still. As I passed through the gardens 
in the early morning the magnolia-trees sent forth a 
heavy fragrance, unrolling their big buds before the 
risen sun ; and the lilies and the dying roses drooped 
as the dew vanished from their petals : the dew 
which had refreshed them in the hours of night. 
The garden is about fourteen acres, and surrounded 
by a broad ditch or canal — very deep, and overgrown 
in parts by tamarisk-trees. Canals like these form a 
complicated network over the whole country, and are 
the only safeguard against the terrible inundations 
which threaten this low land in autumn and in spring. 
They are usually kept rather bare, but this one, 

running round a private garden, is peculiarly green, 

183 



1 84 



DAYS SPENT ON 



and shaded by vegetation. Little recked that calm 
canal as I saw it then what would be its appearance 
an hour later. The scene was in all ways a peaceful 




SCENE OF THE FISHING. 



one. Small, tender water-weeds reared their heads 
amongst the lily stalks and flags ; and thin, green 
shining plants, most lovely to the eye, most fatal 



A DOGE'S FARM 185 

probably to the air, caught at the slanting lights 
which played through manna-ash, acacia-hedge, and 
tamarisk, upon the quiet moat. These waters had 
not been disturbed for many months, and underneath 
the lilies the fish had grown fat and sleepy. This 
fact the fishermen knew, and this it was which so 
delighted them and all the household. For the 
general excitement was great. The butler, coach- 
man, and the head-gardener, leaving inferior menials 
to perform their morning's work, stood amongst the 
grasses on the shore. It seemed incredible to these 
gentlemen that a '* Signorina Inglese *' should enter- 
tain such dangerous and low desires as to wish to 
enter the boat. " Whatever you do, don't move," 
they said sternly, as they put me in the '* barca " — 
a long, flat-bottomed thing like a gondola, without 
any seat, and newly adorned with a heavy coating of 
pitch. It was pretty full of water, left there for the 
sake of the fish we were going to catch. Three 
peasants with bare legs manned it. My seat was on 
the only dry ledge in the whole conveyance. 

We pushed off, and I witnessed a different mode of 
catching fish to any I had before conceived ot. 

Noise, sunlight, and absolute churning up of the 
waters formed the chief features of the sport. A 
three-cornered net, about four feet in diameter, was 
attached by a wooden pivot to a long pole, and 
lowered into the water by Tabarro, the head fisher- 



i86 DAYS SPENT ON 

man. His two companions, Warwar and Boreggio, 
had then to push our boat, with as much dexterity 
and speed as the crazy thing would permit of, 
towards the bank ; attach it by driving their oars 
or poles into the bottom of the canal ; then, seizing 
other poles with rounded ends, to beat and agitate 
the surrounding water with all possible noise and 
splashing. After the first experiment, the net was 
elevated, and found to be empty ; and so for several 
times in succession. The spectators had climbed 
into a large tamarisk-tree, whence thev discharged a 
shower of advice to the fishermen, which, needless to 
say, was ignored by these gentlemen — kings of the 
hour. After several fruitless attempts to secure the 
treasures of the canal in the manner above described, 
our net arose from a bed of water-lilies, and, " Oh,** 
cried the occupants of the tamarisk-tree, *' an eel, an 
eel, by Bacchus ! ** ** An eel ! '* screamed the en- 
tranced head-gardener ; *' but," in a lower voice, 
*' spare my nymphasas.** 

It was a magnificent haul. Two mighty eels, 
three fatted tench, and a couple of luce were at 
once secured and thrown into the bottom of our 
boat. I cannot say that I shared the enthusiasm for 
the eels, or that I at all liked them. They came 
writhing along about our feet — long shining things, 
green like the weeds which had sheltered them. But 
the tench were beauties, round and fat, with delight- 



A DOGE'S FARM 187 

ful pearly colours and flopping fins. Our first 
success was followed by many others, and as soon as 
we had induced that muddy canal to disgorge her 
living treasures in sufficient number they were 
gathered together and shoved into a great dry 
watering-can. The net was freed from branches and 
thorns, and its holes mended with string, for it had 
been rudely handled, what with the banging of the 
sticks and the shovelling in the mud. And then the 
banks were again attacked. Every minute the heat 
increased. One almost saw the wheat and Indian 
corn growing taller in the neighbouring fields. In 
the garden at our backs a bird would break forth 
at times in passionate song, or a dragon-fly meet, 
clashing with another in the air. Blue damozels — 
so blue the purest cobalt could not paint them 
— stayed quivering on some tender water-weed, and 
the feathery fluff" of tamarisk seeds floated in air 
above the water and caught in the shore. But when 
we came dashing forward everything fled, and the 
light on the water changed to murky, almost to 
crimson, hues, whilst the smell of decayed vegetation 
was anything but sweet, increased by the rays of the 
unclouded sun. At last we found that this sun had 
climbed too high. A maid came by with a basket 
to carry the admired eels to the cook. They were 
stewed in wine, and we ate them at supper. 

That was the fishing. My knowledge of the 



i88 DAYS SPENT ON A DOGE'S FARM 

sport in other lands is slight. I have lingered for 
hours along a glacier-stream, dead quiet with a rod, 
and held a line in the soulless Mediterranean and in 
the Cornish sea. One gurnard and a sardine form 
my record hitherto ; so I can safely recommend, as 
far as results go, this noisy go-a-fishing on an Italian 
plain, where in thirty minutes about two dozen large 
tench and eels were captured with all the excitement 
of a hunt, and amidst the beauties of the " waveless 
plain of Lombardy.'* 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE FESTA OF S. ANTONIO AT PADUA 

"II maravigliosa vasello dello Spirito Santo, S. Antonio da 
Padova, uno degli eletti discepoli e compagno di San Francesco 
il quale San Francesco chiamava sue vicario, una volta predlcava 
in concistorio dinanzi al papa e ai cardinali. ... II papa, con- 
siderando e raaravigliandosi della profondita delle sue parole, 
disse : Veramente costui e area del testamento e armario della 
Scrittura divina." — " Fioretti de San Francesco." 

/^~^N June 13th of the year 1231 a boy was born 

^"^^ in Portugal. Later this boy became a monk, 

and entered the Franciscan order. Once, on a sea 

voyage, the ship in which he was sailing was borne 

by contrary winds upon the coasts of Italy. Here 

the boy, who was in fact S. Antonio, landed, 

and joined St. Francis of Assisi, who was then 

holding the first general chapter of his order. 

After that time S. Antonio worked, together 

with St. Francis, in the north of Italy. The 

manner in which his name is still worshipped 

forms a striking instance of the long-lived gratitude 

amongst the poorer classes. He lived but a very 

189 



190 DAYS SPENT ON 

short time in Padua, where he faced the dreaded 
tyrant, Eccelino da Romano. His life on earth was 
short indeed, but so strong was his influence, so firm 
his faith, and beautiful his character and works, that 
his memory is yet fresh and vivid in the minds of 
the people. It has been handed down through over 
six hundred years from father to son, and much of 
the present fame of Padua is owing to the presence 
in it, all those centuries ago, of an obscure Portu- 
guese friar. 

In what light and lovely language has the bio- 
grapher of S. Francesco told of the doings or 
Padua's saint in his ** Fioretti " ! It were impos- 
sible to re- tell that simple but altogether fascinating 
tale of S. Antonio preaching to the fishes in the sea 
at Rimini. 

S. Antonio died in his thirty-seventh year, and 
a short while afterwards he was canonised, and the 
great church at Padua was begun and dedicated to 
the new saint. 

This splendid monument, with its minarets and 
domes, which inevitably suggest an Eastern city, is 
familiar to most travellers in Northern Italy. The 
angelic babies, worked by Donatello in bronze panels 
around its high altar, the patron beasts of the four 
evangelists below the choir wrought by the same 
master, and many gems of early Paduan painting 
and sculpture within the Santo, draw the art student 



A DOGE'S FARM 191 

and the tourist hither in spring and autumn. An 
endless multitude of the devout press daily towards 
the tomb of their favourite saint, and, kneeling 
beside the solid marble slab, press their foreheads or 
draw their hands across the stone which covers his 
remains, and which is said to possess marvellous 
powers of healing both for sorrows and disease. 

The chapel of the Santo is on the left side of the 
church. Scores of silver lamps hang by silver chains 
from its ceiling. Tall silver candlesticks rise up 
from the altar steps to meet them ; festoons of silver 
hearts are garlanded above. The walls are covered 
with marble ; big jars stand full of lilies, and incense 
and sweet oil burn here day and night. There is 
a white shimmer and a fragrance about this place 
which is very beautiful and quiet. The walls and 
steps and arches are covered with wonderful carvings 
by the brothers Lombardi. Big garlands of fruit 
and flowers surround the panels in low relief, repre- 
senting all the miracles of the saint. Here is 
S. Antonio disclosing the whereabouts of a miser's 
heart : *' His heart is in his treasure chest," said 
the saint in one of the legends, and there the rela- 
tions are finding it, whilst others seek it in vain in 
the side of the dead man. And there the sceptical 
soldier has cast his glass cup upon a stone pavement, 
to try the truth of the monk's words. The pave- 
ment is cracked open, but the glass remains intact, 



192 DAYS SPENT ON 

and the young man looks over the window-ledge 
amazed but believing. 

The same devotion throbs in the hearts of the 
people in our nineteenth century as throbbed there 
six hundred years ago. Call it custom, or love of a 
crowd, or desire to sit in a merry-go-round as you 
will, this fact remains that as day dawns on the 13th 
of June, the people from all the surrounding country 
begin to move towards the city with one accord. 
Mountain men and women, too, will tramp on foot 
some two or three days' journey, walking from their 
shady hills in the heat of June to visit the city upon 
the plain which holds the tomb of their saint. The 
strange costumes, the sunburnt, eager faces of these 
people crowding around the shrines in the Duomo, 
falling in weary attitudes upon the altar steps, form 
perhaps the most impressive sight on this remarkable 
day. 

It was with a feeling of real joy that on June 
13, 1892, I, too, found myself upon the road to 
Padua. I wrote a description of what I saw at the 
time and give it here. 

We were called at 6.15, and opening my eyes I 
saw a leaden sky outside my windows, whilst the 
general stickiness of every object within my room 
made me aware that another of the dog days, or 
Gromboolian scirocco, had dawned upon us. We 
breakfasted and drove off to the station of Stanghella 



A DOGE'S FARM I93 

— a party of four. My friend L. had come up 
from Florence a few days before on purpose to 
perform this pilgrimage. She and I wore large sun 
hats and cotton gowns, but our chaperones F. and 
M. shone superior in Parisian bonnets and most 
elegant silk cloaks. Arrived in the station of Stang- 
hella we found a great crowd, and were advised by 
the telegraphist, the stationmaster, the sindaco^ and 
other gentlemen who had won our friendship by a 
serenade the preceding evening, to travel to Padua 
by the ordinary omnibus train, and let the specials 
go by. We did very well in following their advice, 
as the ** specials " were a moving mass ot pilgrims, 
and the heat was great. The capo-stazione told us 
that over fifty thousand people would travel into 
Padua by train alone this day. At about 8.40 we 
got into our train and started towards the holy city 
— for as such I shall for ever retain its image stamped 
upon my brain. We steamed through fields where 
the corn stood tall, and already deeply gilded, then 
through the hills, sleeping in dead heat, and lastly 
into Padua. Our train was an omnibus of omni- 
buses, and we literally dragged across the sunny 
country. Arrived in Padua I was impressed by 
the sense of moving humanity in a manner I have 
never before and may never again experience — a 
variegated throng of men, women, and children 
passing in procession through the narrow streets. 

13 



t94 JDAVS SPENT ON 

Every road was crowded, and as for a cab neither 
love nor money could procure the article ; but we 
found a closed trap belonging to the Stella d'Oro, 
the driver of which volunteered to take us into 
the city. Through the dust and the popolo we 
accordingly rattled. Everything and everybody was 
pressing towards the church of the Santo. Horses, 
donkeys, mules in hundreds were being led or ridden 
or driven towards the " Fiera," which takes place a 
little beyond the cathedral. (A fair and a horse- 
market are held, together with the saint's birthday.) 
It would be impossible to describe the extraordinary 
multitude. The strange thing was that men, beasts, 
and carts, though hopelessly intermingled, maintained 
their course in quiet and unexcited deportment. We 
deposited our wraps at the inn to which we had of 
necessity been brought, and I could not help remem- 
bering my last arrival there with the Teolian clown 
and the apocalypse horse ; then by some lucky chance 
we procured a cab to take us to the Santo. 

The piazza round the cathedral was crowded with 
small booths, where rosaries, portraits of the saints, 
lovely marble images, and every sort of holy ware 
was to be purchased. S. Antonio is a very fasci- 
nating personality, and there were trays and baskets 
full of his miniature figure carved in white or black 
bone with a hole through the headgear for a ring — 
objects which even a bigoted heretic might feel 



A DOGE'S FARM 195 

inclined to purchase promptly. I connect his image 
with the brown necks of small Gromboolian boys and 
girls. Tied with a bit ot cord, he reposes there 
throughout their childhood, and is disclosed even 
through the open shirt of aged cowherds, or of sad 
and withered crones. We stayed to buy some of 
these objects, then we passed into the church. 

The first impression was that of entering a Turkish 
bath. The winter chill of that great mosque had 
been driven up into its topmost cupolas. One knew 
somehow that a chill existed, but the main body was 
bathed in the breathings of a million people. We at 
once pushed into the thick of the huge throng, and 
although the atmosphere was stifling I somehow 
found it strangely congenial — fitted to all the sounds 
and sights around. Hundreds and thousands of 
men and women here were gathered together. They 
knelt in corners, they stood or sat on wicker chairs, 
they moved in slow procession round the shrines. 
Strange portraits of dead men slept on in their marble 
niches. Large-eyed madonnas and gilded saints 
smiled down from frescoed walls. Incense poured 
out from the immense congregation of priests in the 
choir, and above the whole there rose and swelled a 
mighty music : " La messa cantata." Here were 
boys wailing, penetrating voices, men's basses, and 
the pathetic strains of violins flooded with the roll 
of two great organs. In every side chapel a mass 



196 DAYS SPENT ON 

was being celebrated at the same moment as the 
high mass. 

Never have I seen such wealth of shining silver, 
white lilies, embroidered and embossed priests' vest- 
ments, or such undeniable devotion, as that which 
filled the church of the Santo at Padua on June 13, 
1892, and all for the love of a small dead man. It 
is, however, impossible to convey on paper the 
impression left upon one by that singular scene. 

We at last sat down at the back of the high altar 
and listened to the mass. Then we went on again 
round the church. I had never been in a crowd 
before, but was now to experience its possibilities, 
for I somehow got caught up and submerged in the 
main current, which was moving the round of the 
shrines. I was entirely lifted off my feet and found 
myself gently but surely carried forward by a party 
of the hottest, best-mannered, and most curious set 
of mountaineers it has ever been my luck to meet. 
The women wore brilliant satin stays ; great garnets 
glistened in strings upon their necks. The men's 
jackets were short and stiff — brown, green, and 
yellow colours set off their splendid sunburn. I was 
compelled to let them take away my chair, in which 
I had got hopelessly entangled. It was passed over 
the heads of the crowd, and I drifted steadily for- 
ward. 

At last I rejoined my companions in an open space. 



A DOGE'S FARM i97 

The owners of Parisian bonnets had had enough of 
such experiences. I suppose the thermometer might 
have stood at 98° or loo^ Fahr. I do not know, 
nor had I any desire to calculate. L. and I left our 
companions at a side-door, and recommenced our 
pilgrimage. To our great delight we encountered a 
friend in the crowd — Signor Merlin. "Che occa- 
sione," he cried, " per lei " ; and evidently immensely 
pleased himself, he took us under his care, and 
behind his tall form we walked at ease. We made 
the entire round of the Santo, stopping to see the 
shrines, and even passing up with the multitude to 
the tomb of the saint, to draw our hands along the 
marble slab where thousands drew theirs for a blessing. 
Then we came back to the gates of the choir. The 
mass had just then ended. We waited to see the 
bishop and his priests pass into the sacristy. The 
Bishop of Padua is tall and very young for his 
position. There was a great dignity and simplicity 
about him. The tall, white mitres of his companions 
formed absolutely perfect pictures against the wood- 
work and stone pillars. 

We then rejoined the Parisian bonnets, who were 
sick of their prolonged devotions and rated us 
soundly for our lengthy absence. We returned to 
the Stella d'Oro and ordered a lunch in the large 
cool dining-room ; rice and Wiener Schnitzel, straw- 
berries and beer. The meal was not unpleasant, but 



198 DAYS SPENT ON 

the intense heat scarcely produced an appetite, 
though it exacted a siesta in which we did not 
hesitate to indulge from the hours of one to three. 
After that we once more started forth into the 
Paduan streets. Of course we went to the Cafe 
Pedrocchi and drank coffee, and stewed. Pedrocchi 
was about as crowded as the Duomo, only here 
students were added to the peasant throng. Also 
we " did " the Salone Municipiale and the church ot 
Sta. Giustina. And after that we took a header into 
the tair. 

Here were merry-go-rounds by the dozen, shows, 
menageries, booths, and horses. In fact that terrible 
thing — a mass of mankind paying to be amused. In 
their midst the tall white poplar-trees in the Pra 
della Valle rose calm against a cloudless sky, and 
grotesque senators and prophets gazed into the 
waters at their feet with a marble indifference to the 
maddening dust and hubbub all around them. 

We, too, panted for one instant's shade, one 
minute's calm repose. And this was found at once 
within the gates of those famous botanical gardens — 
mother of every botanical garden in Europe. Here 
under huge flowering tulip-trees, across grass paths, 
and by still ponds where lotus leaves were growing, 
we wandered for some happy moments. The yellow 
Alpine foxglove was growing there in great beauty, 
and a flaming allspice, which I have never seen 



A DOGE'S FARM 199 

before, scented the whole air of the garden. Above 
the trees rose the domes of the Santo, pearly things 
against a faint blue sky. I think the ordinary trees, 
the flowers, and water had gained for me nearly 
double their accustomed sweetness ; but there was 
no time to linger in their midst. We hurried back 
into the heart of the fair, and soon were in the very 
thick of the horse-market, where, surrounded by 
galloping steeds, the Parisian bonnets were driven 
quite distracted, and L. and I snorted with delight. 
A delicious havoc reigned in that piazza. Young 
horses flew round and round in narrow circles, 
ridden bare-backed or encouraged by the bystanders ; 
small curricles dashed through the throng, and pro- 
miscuous groups of ponies kicked out at intervals as 
their companions passed them. 

We walked on through the whole fair. The 
streets of Padua were transfigured by a double row 
of booths. Here were displayed, and here we 
bought, entrancing objects : copper pails and fans 
and marble fruits which imitate to marvellous accu- 
racy their juicy prototypes (fruits which my aesthetic 
friends have scorned upon my writing-table). 
Weighed down with all these purchases, and con- 
scious of further fatigue ahead, some members of 
our party began to lag. There are few things 
more fatiguing than the sight of hundreds of 
fatigued people at the end of a long day. It was 



200 BAYS SPENT ON 

with immense relief that we again found ourselves 
in the Duomo at 6.30, took seats, sank down in 
them, and awaited the processione. That scene is the 
one which out of the whole day I remember best, so 
deeply did its beauty and calm impress me. It 
seemed a poem, to write of which in prose were 
pity. 

The thousands now were ordered out in rows all 
up the body of the church from the west doors to 
the steps of the high altar. The low light of the 
setting sun streamed in upon them, gilding with its 
golden rays the heads of kneeling men and women. 
So tired were these people that they fell asleep in 
groups, leaning one against the other, and above the 
sleepers hundreds of others dreamily swung their 
fans. 

Those paper fans of Padua ! never shall I forget 
the charm of them, as old men and young, women 
and little children, swung them through the Santo in 
the calm of vespers. 

The sun went down behind the houses out in 
the piazza, and one young man's falsetto voice rose 
high above the organs and the choir. Hundreds of 
lights shone one by one over the altar and down the 
aisles. 

Then the procession formed. It was a beautiful 
procession, unlike to any I have seen before. Each 
waxen candle was bound with branches of real 



A DOGE'S FARM 201 

Madonna lilies. There must have been thousands 
of the glorious shining flowers borne round the 
church of the Santo on that evening. Small children 
scattered rose-leaves, and little boys staggered under 
the unbearable weight of their lily stalks as they 
preceded the relic of the saint, his face set in the 
most magnificent jewels. We saw the diamonds 
round the jaw glittering in the candle-light long 
before the relic passed us. Indeed it was the most 
lustrous point visible in the whole great crowded 
dome. 

The procession moved round the church and out 
at the north door into the twilight of the piazza. 
The congregation arose from dreams and followed it. 

We, too, had to go. It was eight o'clock. We 
drove to the station and caught the last train. I 
think we were tired. We sank down into the 
heated carriage, and were carried home to Vescovana 
across a black and sleepy country, lighted faintly 
by a summer sky. There was a mist and a marvel 
of fire-flies over the corn-fields, and the night on 
those broad plains seemed wonderfully full of rest. 



CHAPTER XIV 



THE HARVEST 



ON the 19th of June the harvest began. The 
20th or 25th are the dates usually appointed, 
but the crops were ripe, the weather fine. I think 
there was no single cloud in all the sky. For many 
days there had been a hush — a sort of feeling of 
expectancy through all the country which was golden 
as the sun itself. As we drove into the fields that 
first morning of the harvest I felt but a slight 
difference from other days, yet the great work of 
the Gromboolian year had begun, and from end to 
end of the vast plain small sickles were changing its 
entire aspect. 

We drove into the property and found the men at 
work on the Dieci farm. They begin to work with 
the dawn — at three. It takes thirty men to cut a 
field, but the thirty will do twelve fields in a day, 
which means about fifteen English acres. They 
work in a long and slanting line — young men and old 
in white canvas clothes, with here and there a blue 



DA YS SPENT ON A DOGE'S FARM 203 

shirt, now and then a more enormous grey felt hat. 
Slowly they seem to go, the round sickle taking the 
stalks almost tenderly, and leaving the cornflowers 
— intense patches of blue — amongst the stubble. 
There is a dead stillness about the country and 
about the work. You could scarcely believe, were 
you not informed of the fact, that hundreds of men 
over hundreds of miles were spending more bushels 
of human energy in this season than they would 
be called to use tor the rest of the year. Sitting 
in some low ditch or uncut field, you would be 
puzzled by one single sound — a long low cry, as 
of a wailing spirit wandering somewhere in an im- 
mense and melancholy waste. This is the A BassOy 
which reminds those who know the East of the 
muezzin, or call to prayer, from mosques repeated 
through the day. Hear it once, see where it comes 
from, and all your life you will keep that saddening 
yet charming chord of Gromboolian melody within 
your ear, and it will bring back to your mind the 
scene of a Lombard harvest. As the men cut they 
have to stop at intervals to make a knot of straw 
wherewith at a later hour to bind the stacks, and it 
is the voice of the head reaper calling for this pause 
which makes the Gromboolian muezzin. All the 
reapers bend a little lower, then stand up and knot 
some heads of corn together, then go on again. 
A long low line of golden corn half laid to the 



204 BAYS SPENT ON 

ground and threaded through with a string of grey- 
blue men. Beyond, in an infinite perspective of 
pollard willow-trees, of Indian corn and wheat, 
the pale and slender campaniles of a distant village 
rising into the heated air like dreams. An opal 
midday light bathing the whole. 

But you cannot describe in solid prose the absolute 
fulfilment of that scene — the entire blending of the 
hues, the bath of sunshine combined with deepest 
melancholy. Words and additional adjectives are 
no good whatever. Not even Millet could have 
put the thing on canvas. Air, sun-laden air with 
nothing to break or to disturb it, and a land where 
every inch is known to be cultivated by the hand of 
man, lying as though quite undisturbed in the cradle 
of its Creator. 

Only the wail of the ^ Basso and the small faint 
brush of the sickle. Sitting in the quiet loggia of 
the villa during the hours of work, rising at dawn to 
peer through shuttered windows, I have heard that 
cry arise from all the country round — from near the 
gates to far — oh, far beyond the banks of the Adige. 
It penetrates above the song of birds, the buzz of 
crickets, or the rustling wind, and tells the listener 
that if he is sitting idle, a great concourse of men 
is working there unseen amongst the fields. 

At midday there is a pause. At three they begin 
again, and work till four, then on again till seven. 



A DOGE'S FARM 205 

In the afternoon the women appear upon the 
scene, which at once becomes more varied and more 
lively. These ladies have nothing to do with the 
reaping or the stacking. Their main object is 
gleaning. Gleaning is a pure, unmitigated passion. 
It is in the heart of these people — their very souls 
seem bound up in it. Family cares, if they exist, 
are forgotten. Non-existent, they are arranged for 
during the courtship which the occasion makes 
possible. 

A woman can glean a franc's worth of corn in the 
day if she works hard enough. This being the 
season of courtship, the girl who has gleaned most 
during the period is the most admired and sought 
after in marriage. She hangs all her gains out over 
her window or upon her parents' thatched roof — each 
little hut is covered with corn during this season — 
and thus the world measures her worth. I must add 
that a strong voice and a stalwart ankle are also 
admired in the stubble field. 

There is a peculiar red which these young women 
know how to wear — a red as of crushed pome- 
granate seeds — a harmony of yellow and of crimson 
with a splash of blue. They use it for their aprons ; 
otherwise a happy monotony is shown in their attire. 
The faultless white canvas shirt, slouched a little 
over the shoulders, and short sleeve open wide at 
the elbow ; over this the cotton bodice of white, or 



2o6 DAYS SPENT ON 

brown, or blue, laced at the back and gathered tight 
above the breast, giving a peculiarly abundant beauty 
to the figure (and I must note that the more these 
bodices gape at the back, the greater the fashion of 
the wearer). Then the short petticoat of thicker 
cotton, nearly always a dull dark blue, and the bare 
brown legs and feet. A flapping Lombard hat, with 
a new ribbon round its crown, a flower in their hair, 
an extra dash of grease upon their forelocks — nothing 
beyond to mark the height of the " season.*' 

You will see these daughters of the soil — shoals of 
them — apparently crawling, but in truth tearing along 
the narrow edge of grass which lines the road. They 
are empresses for the time. They hold themselves 
like queens, though for the most part their figures 
are short and square. They press against the gates 
and hedges, clamouring for the rights which were 
accorded to them from the time of Ruth and long 
before her epoch. 

It is the men who do all the hard work of reaping 
and stacking, then come the gleaners, and the next 
day, if possible, the oxen drag the plough. Thus in 
a space of thirty-six hours a waving field of corn 
has become a tumbled heap of muddy clods, and the 
whole aspect of the country changed. 

Having spoken of the men and women, I must 
now tell of the oxen, who after all deserve most 
praise. Let it be remembered that it is they who 



A DOGE'S FARM 207 

yearly turn every sod in the Italian plains and hills 
and valley ! Those calm white beasts, with eyes 
more beautiful than the eyes of women, and tempers 
which never ruffle ! All through the hottest season 
they have to work. In winter, if their owners are 
poor, they often starve, and in the Dog Days they 
must pull the plough through soil whose richness forms 
the joy of its owners, and therefore their despair. 

But as I have shown in another chapter, the life of 
oxen on the Doge's Farm is made as smooth and 
bright as possible, and to see them at their work is 
a pleasure to be enjoyed without reservation. After 
the first day of reaping we drove out to see the first 
field ploughed. Long low shadows lay over the 
stubble from the willow-trees to the west. But in a 
belt of sunlight the oxen moved along, a team of 
eight — four on the stubble, four in the sods — pulling 
the plough through a depth of thirty centimetres. 
One man held the plough, another walked at the 
heads of the first couple, and a small boy with a long 
willow wand patronised the entire team : " Hoa 
Petrarca, Ai Magnifico, Stai Plon Plon." In answer 
to which familiar names the great creatures would 
slightly move their heads, then lumber on — dread- 
fully slow, absolutely calm, and dignified beyond 
description. 

I am sure they knew it, those milk-white beasts, 
how deeply the soil required their labour. Shaking 



208 DAYS SPENT ON A DOGE'S FARM 

and lifting their delicate necks beneath the yoke, the 
** dinanzi " go — always the elegant ones in front, the 
young ladies just come out. Then the ''squinzaglio" 
— those more accustomed to the plough — followed by 
the '^sottopeso" — usually a couple of the elder oxen, 
and lastly the bull and his fellow, "II Timon." 

To fully realise the splendour of any cattle you 
should see a Gromboolian bull moving in front of the 
plough. He gives you to understand that it is no 
sort of trouble for him, but only a great condescension 
for his broad hoofs and mighty flanks to move across 
the sods. He is always adorned by metal coverings 
to his horns, which shine like burnished silver, and 
he is massive and regal in appearance. 

This party of eight go up and down the field 
which so few hours before was a land of waving corn. 
By night you will not recognise the place, and the 
young moon will see dull patches of earth where her 
mother had so lately smiled on shining crops. The 
same crop will be sown in the same field next year, 
and indeed for four years in succession. At this 
fact the British farmer may well open his mouth in 
horror. The soil goes to a depth of forty to fifty 
centimetres, when it usually becomes a swamp. 
Nature's hands have formed it more than men's 
labour. It looks like clay, but is in fact composed 
of the silting up of rivers, the beds of time-old lakes, 
and the century-long droppings of a marshy vegetation. 



CHAPTER XV 



GLEANING 



GLEANING, as I have already stated, is the 
people's passion. When the corn is stacked 
(and it appears to me that it is the interest of the 
reapers to leave a considerable amount upon the 
ground for the sake of their wives and daughters, 
their lovers or acquaintance) the news is spread that in 
that field there will be gleaning at such and such an 
hour. If the property is large the crowd which gathers 
outside its gates will be proportionately big, and not 
only the women of the country, but also their rivals 
from the neighbouring villages, will put in appear- 
ance. I shall not easily forget the tone of mingled 
scorn and pride with which a small girl answered my 
inquiries about a band of remarkably charming young 
women who were evidently not of her company. 
" Those ! " she exclaimed, with a shrug ; " oh, they 
come from a great distance. They are forestieriy 
** And where do they come from ? " " From 

14 2°9 



210 DAYS SPENT ON 

Granze," was the answer — a hamlet lying one mile 
from Vescovana. 

Sunday is the day on which to see the gleaning to 
advantage; for then the men join too in the pas- 
time, or at least come and look on at it, and there is 
a general feeling of bacchanalian carouse in the stubble 
field. 

One Sunday evening we returned late from our 
drive about the estate. It was eight o'clock. The 
sun was touching the horizon and casting back long 
shafts of golden light such as I have attempted to 
describe elsewhere. The gold dust rose above the 
crowd which awaited our arrival outside the gates of 
the '' Dodici," of whose owner it is the somewhat 
tyrannical practice to control the hours of gleaning to 
suit the pleasures of herself and of her guests. We 
will hope that the waiting adds to the fun. Anyhow 
I was the favoured mortal on this occasion for whom 
some eight hundred busy people had been kept waiting 
through a tedious summer afternoon. Gromboolians 
have long powers of endurance,otherwise I should have 
felt even more humiliated by the situation than I did. 
For a "Signorina Inglese," whose driving powers are 
not exactly satisfactory in her own eyes, whose com- 
panion, the head coachman, desires her to show both 
himself, herself, and the horse to advantage, whilst 
leading the way across a stubble field before an 
impatient throng of critical natives, is not altogether 



A DOGE'S FARM 



211 



a person to be envied. She must hear it discussed 
not only why she is interested in their affairs, or if she 




BARCHESSE, VESCOVANA. 



can manage her horse, but also whether her nose be 
long or short, her looks good or ill. She must, in 



212 DAYS SPENT ON 

fact, be considered as the puppet which her whole 
British nature recoils from, because her distinguished 
foreign predecessors have been this before her. 
There is something to be said for the fact that 
our race is termed " matta " in Italy. Madness 
may cover a multitude of innocent offences, and 
under cover of it I indulged my harmless desires, 
such as myself joining the gleaners and conversing 
with them freely. 

The procession moved forward : the Calais-Douvre 
in front, the gig following, the multitude behind, a 
large greyhound and several sheep-dogs barking in 
the rear ; whilst the bailiffs walked in front, bearing, 
with a sort of potential air, their big clubs — signs of 
superior social standing. 

The corn is piled in stacks of sixteen bundles in 
a line all up the centre of the field. The effect pro- 
duced is like that of a yellow lake with a line of big 
ships sailing down it. Round its shores in crowded 
lines the gleaners stood. There was a dead hush. 
The golden light lingered about their heads and 
yellowed all their shirts, then caught the willow-trees, 
and lighted on the piles of corn. But at their feet 
the shadows grew to blackness. 

Then the word was given. 

There was a rush, a stampede as of cavalry, and 
the surface of that yellow lake was ruffled over with 
a tempest of brown feet ; brown arms caught up the 



A DOGE'S FARM 213 

golden straw, piling it in bundles. Up flew the dust 
over those hundreds of brown heads. All backs 
were bent, and gradually submerged in piles of 
straw. 

From the box or my gig I looked down over 
some eighty acres of stubble, absolutely alive with 
flapping hats, white shirts, and bare brown arms. 

The air was electric ; the sun had set, but some 
reflected light came back to gild the top of every 
object. Infected with the general spirit, I plunged 
amongst the gleaners and found myself clawing along 
the ground in company with the sexton. 

Night darkened over this strange scene, and a 
red light flushed the western heavens. That night 
we read the Book or Ruth together, instead of 
stealing out upon the balcony. More than three 
thousand years ago that tale of harvest had been 
told, in language wonderfully clear and pure and 
simple, of the young Jewish woman who gleaned 
among the stubble. Strangely the story thrilled 
us, for it seemed the world was just as young to- 
day as then, and Ruth might still go gleaning after 
the reapers in the fields of Boaz. 

Another night there was a fire on the estate. I 
find a full description of it in one of my letters from 
which I now quote. A Gromboolian fire was in- 
teresting, and rather dramatic. 

" We settled down to dinner at about nine. It 



214 DAYS SPENT ON 

was a dead hot evening. Suddenly a murmur arose 
and swelled through the house, and Morato rushed 
in with the news that one of the farms was on fire — 
might the bells be rung ? We ran up to the top of 
the house, and in the quiet evening light we saw a 
red glare arise towards the Adige. The general 
excitement was tremendous : the church bells began 
to be hammered on in a peculiarly horrid manner ; 
the butler petitioned to go with the pumps ; the 
cook finished serving the dinner; A. scolded and 
flopped his sleeves, and soon every one was ofF, and 
Madame Pisani and I packed into the closed carriage, 
still heavy with midday heat, and crowded with gutta- 
percha pails. As we shut the window I saw the young 
moon through its glass. The horses tore off and 
arrived near the scene of the disaster. There was a 
considerable crowd of people — all the Contessa's men 
and bailiffs with crowds of gleaners. No one was 
doing anything. Morato had brought the wrong 
screw for the pumps, and the pumps were being pulled 
at a leisurely pace by a pair of oxen. The sparks 
flew in cascades from the burning house, all around 
was dead still, the earth black and the sky pale lemon 
in the west. Morato went back for the screw ; we 
waited and heard the dismal tale. The house was 
let by Madame Pisani to a carter, who, against her 
advice, had admitted some families for the gleaning 
season. One of these was composed of three small 



A DOGE'S FARM 215 

children (the youngest only three months). The 
mother, in her gleaner's madness, had locked them 
into an upper room together with all her gleanings, 
and gone off herself to the fields. In that room the 
fire naturally broke out, but luckily a young man 
passing by saw the smoke and was able to climb 
into the room and rescue the half-suffocated children. 
When the proper screw at length arrived the 
pump was put into the ditch and began to work. 
Then the Contessa descended from her barouche, and 
I shall never forget the extraordinary scene which 
ensued. With her gorgeous evening dress held 
up over a yet more gorgeous petticoat she swept 
into the crowd and addressed it collectively and 
individually. There was certainly a fecklessness of 
purpose about the proceedings, and the bailiffs issued 
orders which they should themselves have performed. 
She denounced the men, and threatening them with a 
lengthy ladder which she tore from a neighbouring 
tree, commanded them to work, with the result that 
one youth more desperate and anxious to please than 
the rest jumped into the centre of the burning house 
with the hose, and Madame Pisani scrambled after 
him, passionately rebuking him for his folly. She 
then manipulated the syringe herself with about 
twenty of the natives holding up the hose behind, 
the sparks flying all around, beams falling, and 
a general scene of glare, confusion, pumps, and 



2i6 DAYS SPENT ON A DOGE'S FARM 

people in the midst of the most wonderfully lovely 
and restful midsummer night that I (alas ! an * Un- 
employed ') have ever known. All around the 
millions of frogs sang on, their monotonous guttural 
voices mixing strangely with the discordant sounds 
of man. And above there was such a heaven of quiet 
and indifferent stars ! 

We were not home till near upon eleven, but we 
left the thing pretty well extinct — everything burnt 
save four bare walls. 



CHAPTER XVI 



THRESHING 



A SLIGHT pause followed upon the fury of 
-^^^ reaping and gleaning : then came the thresh- 
ing, which last was the cause of indescribable excite- 
ment and concern in Gromboolia. The threshing- 
machines have their winter quarters under the 
arcades of the Doge's Farm. There the unwieldy 
beasts may be said to hybernate during eleven 
months of the year. At the end of June, when 
every crop has been laid low, they are brought out 
and dragged across country to perform their im- 
portant offices. 

An imperial triumph — an entry of the Caesars into 
Rome — could scarcely have excited more propor- 
tionate attention than that of the arrival of " La 
Macchina " at a farm in Gromboolia. The farm 
had been duly arranged and prepared. Its inhabi- 
tants had a sense that the dignity and importance of 
events about to be performed on its premises was 
such that they must put on their best clothes and 



217 



2i8 DAYS SPENT ON 

display their finest copper. The threshing-floor was 
weeded, scraped, and re-scraped ; the sacks laid out 
in order ; lions rampant and ducal coronets put to 
the front. 

There are two machines on the Doge's Farm. 
The one of latest date is the admiration and envy of 
the whole Gromboolian universe, and the great black 
monster is undeniably an impressive sight. He 
needs at least twelve oxen to draw him. Each 
machine has his keeper and his groom. It were 
impossible to overestimate the importance of these 
gentlemen who appear upon the scenes for one week 
out of the fifty-six, and during that period boss the 
entire show. The keepers are men of education 
and intellect, and one of them — a Venetian — adds to 
these other charms beauty and a great conceit. It 
is their office to see that their machines are in good 
working order, and well greased by their grooms. 
Beyond this they are careful to perform no work or 
any sort. I formed their acquaintance and found 
their conversation polished and delightful. The 
beautiful Venetian first mounted me upon his charge 
and then exposed to me all the details of her entrails, 
stroking her iron flanks as though she were some 
beast of breeding and great beauty. '* Roostun — 
propria Roostun — roba inglese,'* he announced, with 
vast complacency. Mr. Ruston ought to visit Grom- 
boolia ; he would meet with a royal reception. 



A DOGE'S FARM 219 

We drove out late one evening to witness the 
arrival of the threshing-machine at the Pioppa, which 
was the first farm where it was to work. For many 
weeks there had been a stir and a clash of iron and 
shuffling of tarpaulin under the barchesse. On the 
30th of June the hybernators were to see light. 
The scene was impressive. We took our stand 
at the gates of the Pioppa. After some waiting a 
rumbling noise as of distant thunder announced the 
approach of Leviathan. Our beautiful white friends 
then appeared in the lane, waving the red tassels 
from off their spreading horns. Behind them 
trundled pompously the unwieldy monster who was 
to swallow up the fruits of all their months of labour. 
The oxen knew exactly what they were about, and 
how dignified and superior they looked and how 
it was their beautiful big eyes which fascinated us, 
and not the smoky funnel which they dragged. 
The procession moved into the property, and the 
next morning at daybreak the work of threshing 
began. 

Leviathan had long hours of work — " from dawn 
to dewy eve '' he laboured. The natives have 
surmounted their first prejudice of his claws, and 
flock most gladly round his flanks, stuffing his never- 
satiated mouth with the golden sheaves. The 
women scrape the chaff on to low stretchers, which 
small boys carry, running to the barn doors on bare 



220 DAYS SPENT ON 

feet. The young men make long pyramids of 
straw, which they impale on endless poles and carry 
above their heads in triumph to swell the stacks the 
older men are building in acacia groves. 

It is then that Gromboolians sing. It is not love 
songs which their minds create, but an impassioned 
praise of their own powers in stacking and impaling 
straw. I tried to secure the words on paper, but 
they were fleeting, and the threads of those rambling 
odes were not lightly to be wound by my unedu- 
cated fingers. 

There is a buzz, a throb, a sense of concentrated 
life and animation during the work hours of Levia- 
than. Every day we visited those farms where he 
was working. We sat on chairs outside the farm 
door, in the intensest heat. We became half hypno- 
tised — fascinated by the spectacle of so much life 
and labour in one single corner of the plain. 

A sea of golden grain ; a throng of brown arms 
and legs and canvas shirts moving amongst the 
waves of yellow straw, and lines of bulging sacks. 
A whirr of leather straps, a panting fire-engine, a 
rush of sheaves, and above, for miles in the quiet 
sky, the floating away of chaff and thistle-down. 

The machines travelled from one farm to another 
in a very short space of time, considering the hercu- 
lean labours they performed. When they left the 
grain was gathered into sacks, packed on to carts, 




o 

H 
H 
O 

z 

< 




A DOGE'S FARM 221 

and taken to Vescovana. In the late evening the 
young men come from their work and carry the 
sacks up to the granaries. This is the hardest 
labour of the year. The sacks are very heavy, 
weighing from 50 to 72 kilos each, and it re- 
quires both strength and agility to hoist them on 
the shoulders and run up the precipitous brick steps 
into the barns. The work is well paid. A man 
can even earn five francs in a single evening by 
straining his muscles considerably, and it is the 
young giants of Gromboolia who compete and re- 
joice in the process. They strip themselves of all 
possible clothing, and if Michelangelo were to see 
them he might glory in the grand display of human 
muscle. The low red light of the setting sun 
streams into the barchesse^ flooding the carts with 
the golden grain, the sacks, the dust, and large 
lithe figures of the men. 

The beautiful Canotto excelled at this work. His 
extreme vanity led him to carry two sacks at a time, 
singing loudly all the time. Canotto was a splendid 
creature — a prize specimen of Gromboolian humanity 
— and he knew it. He stood about 6 ft. 3 in. on his 
bare feet. A fiendish joy in his life and his beauty 
played for ever through his eyes. He had passed 
his military service in the cuirassure because of 
his size and strength. L. photographed him one 
morning reaping. When the print arrived I told 



222 DA YS SPENT ON A DOGE'S FARM 

Canotto of it, imparting the news to him one 
evening as we drove through some fields in front of 
the gleaners. " E molto bello," I said to the smiling 
Adonis (meaning, of course, the plate). " Ah," he 
answered me blandly, smiling, " you see I am very 
beautiful." Then he seized the prettiest girls by 
the hands and rushed with them across the stubble 
into the sunset — three superb specimens of this 
Southern humanity — awfully regardless of those 
austere qualities in human life which haunt for ever 
the brow of the mountaineer. 



CHAPTER XVII 



DAY AT TRISSI NO 



T WAS called at four, and arose unwillingly, not 
^ because I was sleepy, but merely dulled by the 
dreariness of dawn and with that peculiar hopeless- 
ness of self and of earthly or even heavenly comfort 
which inevitably enters the mind of one looking at 
that hour upon the lowlands. 

Deny it or not as you will, I tor my part must 
confess to a belief that Nature, like other beautiful 
ladies, has her moments of deshabille when she 
should not be contemplated too closely. Let her 
shake out those locks of hers, sodden and uncombed, 
clotted and draggled by the dews of night. Then, 
with the second kiss of her father, the sun, let her 
lovers go forth and embrace her. 

There is, moreover, something uniquely depressing 
in a Paduan dawn : a certain close clamminess in 
the bent leaves of the camomile flowers draggling 
in mud along the road ; and, in the drooping grass 
and dripping ribbons of the maize, a heavy melan- 



223 



224 BAYS SPENT ON 

choly. The sun arises hot and damp amid the 
soaking mists which encircle the horizon line. You 
scarcely see your god of day, but dead dull belts 
of crimson cross the western sky, and a faint, 
feverish blue vanishes above in the higher air, which 
is very chill. The peasant girls emerge from their 
mud huts, and creep sullenly between the hedges 
of Indian corn, shivering as their bare feet press the 
dew. Yet these are the same women who, some 
four hours later, will appear like goddesses gleaning 
on the sun-baked stubble fields. The farmers drive 
depressed and unstretched horses along the silent 
roads, sitting wrapped tight in fur-lined mantles — 
grim, grey men, who at midday will be cocking it 
over all the roost. No bird sings. 

At five o'clock we drove amidst these things 
in the *' Calais-Douvre " to the station of Stang- 
hella, there got into the train and closed the 
windows, for fever haunted the mind of my 
companion. A., more than ever at this hour of 
the day, and no amount of camphor crystals or 
great-coats could make him happy. If any one 
desires to realise the birth of a summer day in 
Gromboolia let him enter one of its omnibus trains 
at five o'clock on a July morning, and be dragged 
across the plain at the rate of ten miles an hour. 
He will have every opportunity to note its progress. 
Be it confessed, I closed my eyes, but opened 



A DOGE'S FARM 225 

them sometimes, and saw the disappearance or 
the mists and caught a vision of the Euganean 
Hills through which we passed. Then I looked 
again, and there was Padua. See Padua then and 
you will know her splendour. Her pearly domes, 
her pointed minarets, rose in an opal cluster as 
of sea-shells above the mulberry-trees — an Eastern 
city seen suddenly in the very heart of this Italian 
plain. Also the day had come : no dampness any- 
where, nor sign of mist, but blue, clear, radiant 
blue above our heads, and an immense sun pouring 
mighty beams across Venetia. 

At Padua one omnibus train was exchanged for 
another, and we started off towards the Monti 
Berici. The country seemed more scorched and 
dry in these parts than in Gromboolia. The acacia 
hedges were already tipped with orange, the ditches 
void or water, and naked stalks of water-lilies reared 
themselves from out the sun-baked mud. Blue 
mallows grew abundantly amongst the stubble, 
and the corn was stacked more in the English 
manner. Indeed, after about thirty miles of travel 
we experienced the delicious sensation of being 
in " foreign parts." We skirted along the foot 
of the Monti Berici — low wooded mountains all 
in miniature, with flecks of white and red where 
marble villas rose amidst dark alleys of cypress and 
of pine. Vicenza*s tall red campanile — and in all 

15 



226 DAYS SPENT ON 

Italy there is none as rosy or as slender — shot up 
above Palladio's Sala as we neared the city. At the 
next station of Tavernelle we left the train, prepared 
to take a tram to Trissino. We were here told, 
however, by two drivers who clamoured for our 
patronage, that the tramvai would not start for 
another hour ; so we were driven to charter the 
small but tidy gig and the least dismal horse of one 
of these gentlemen, and commenced a long drive up 
the Val d'Agno. 

It was appallingly hot and dry. The country 
seemed absolutely denuded of clothes. The mul- 
berry-trees were stripped bare for the silkworms, 
the corn cut, the fields abandoned, the Indian corn 
planted too late, and withered by the heat of July 
days. But as we slowly advanced into that broad 
valley matters began to change. Our road lay under 
the hill and through the present town of Mon- 
tecchio. Above us the two skeleton towers of the 
old fortress stood like guardian eagles. Montecchio 
has a very pleasing situation on the last spurs of the 
Alps, and the young Romeo may have played within 
its walls and learnt a little of his love for nature 
from the beauty of the landscape all around him. 
The old fortress is now abandoned ; the city wall 
shows like a torn rag upon the hillside. But there 
is a great charm about the present town, which 
consists of a single street — two lines ot houses 



A DOGE'S FARM 227 

running the round of the hill. The length of this 
street seems interminable. The houses are well 
built but ill kept. The massive corner-stones, the 
open portals, the bulging iron balconies all seemed 
dusty and asleep as we drove through. No creature 
stirred across the pavement to draw up water from 
those glorious wells, for wells are a great feature 
in Montecchio. I counted four of them along 
the winding street, huge hunks of marble heavily 
carved and worn by the interminable hauling up 
of buckets through generations in centuries past. 
They are now adorned by iron frameworks to 
facilitate the progress of the bucket strings in our 
nineteenth century. 

We left the genial hills and crossed a line of 
straight fields, to wind once more amongst the 
mountains of Montecchio. And here we saw a 
sight new and, to me, most pleasant, namely, the 
Venetian sumach flowering in all its glory. Indeed 
the hill looked as though some flock of pink and 
yellow birds had passed it by, scattering their fluff 
across its sides. But instead of this it was the 
seeding-time of that delightful bush known to 
me hitherto only in gardens — old English garden 
books call it the wig-tree. Small pinks, cam- 
panulas, and many familiar herbs grew on those 
sunny slopes ; and every minute the vegetation 
became denser, greener, more abundant. The fields 



228 DAYS SPENT ON 

now were fields of hay ; we smelt the scented pollen 
across the hedge. It is true that the river-bed was 
dry, but one knew fresh water had washed abun- 
dantly those whitening pebble stones and left its 
memory upon the meadow flowers. 

We were now high up in the valley, and coming 
round a corner we saw Trissino — a small green 
hill, a bower of vines, of trees, of shrubs, and olives, 
from whose maze statues and palace fronts, brown 
homesteads and church towers, peered forth upon 
a billowy sea of green. For the foot of that hill at 
Trissino was lapped by meadows broad and shady 
full to the brim of yellow flowers and of hemlock 
heads innumerable. Long avenues of poplar were 
planted here amongst the grasses — planted by a 
wise man, who desired to make men amorous of 
his hill-town by drawing their eyes unconsciously 
through such sweet visions up to his palaces beyond. 
So cool, so green, so fresh and scented was this 
place, you desired to stretch limbs weary with the 
dust and travel, and rest for ever in those easy 
shallows. But instead of committing such a lazy 
folly we rattled on up the street of the town 
and entered the inn. "You can have nothing at 
all to eat," said its inhospitable landlord; "we 
are not accustomed to forestieri. There is no meat 
in the house, neither can we procure any in the 
town.'' 



A DOGE'S FARM 



229 



There are few things, perhaps, more painful to 
one's vanity than when absolutely enamoured of 
a new place to be treated as out of it — utter 
strangers with foreign tastes and needs. This fact 




STEPS LEADING TO FRONT DOOR, TRISSINO. 



certainly pained my companion more than myself. 
For had he not been born and bred in Trissino ? 
Did not his family arms adorn the walls, and 



230 DAYS SPENT ON 

were they not carved on every tomb within its 
church ? My poor plea of having fasted since 
4 a.m. was mean by comparison. " I will eat ! '* 
roared A. " At all costs I will eat ! Son of 
your mother, do you understand me ? " The 
landlord was duly impressed by this very simple 
appellation. He called together and abused all 
his womenkind, by which equally simple means 
a meal was evolved. During its preparation A. 
strode into the piazza and harangued the inhabitants, 
whilst I attempted a game of bowls below the 
mulberry-trees. 

''Who was your father.'^" "In what condition 
were the money affairs of your grandmother when 
she died ? " " Why are you so much ugher than 
your aunts .^" and questions of the same pene- 
tration and politeness met my ears from the piazza. 
Then, "You can eat ! " screeched the landlord from 
an upper window, and A. and I collided in our 
efforts to reach the doorway. 

Silence followed as we took our stools in the cool 
dining-room of that unfrequented pothouse, and 
attacked the largest basin of maccaroni con for- 
maggio ever perhaps offered to a coachman, a 
priest, and an English traveller. There were eggs, 
too, in a nice hard omelette, rare slices of salame 
in a piece of newspaper, cheese, and Trissino wine : 
" In viaggio si fa cosi," explained A., who had thrust 



A DOGE'S FARM 231 

a certain new and unbecoming wideawake, which had 
come from Paris and greatly oppressed him, to the 
extreme back of his head, and was shovelling in the 
maccaroni with ecstatic gusto. 

After this meal we went out straight to see 
the town. It was nearly midday. It was the 
7th of July, and the hour which can only be 
described as being absolutely shadeless. We walked 
up a steep winding road which leads to the villa and 
the church of Trissino. There were houses and 
cypress hedges on one side of our path, whilst 
the hill was supported on the other by high walls. 
These walls one scarcely saw. They were hidden 
by a hundred flowering shrubs, which, burying their 
roots in the shaded earth behind, burst in splendid 
bloom upon the heated street, there to please the 
passer-by, to ripen seed and seek for sun and rain 
and air. Here grew valerian white and red, shaded 
by pomegranates. Caper-flowers rushed down in 
white cascades ; a warm breeze played among their 
purple stamens. Small sedums, campanulas, and 
tiny ferns peered from the lower cracks, and roses 
and red honeysuckle fell from the cypress-trees 
above. 

Here, indeed, was a wall garden which the wall 
gardener might weep in envy to behold, in impotence 
to rival. 

Up and on we went. At intervals we caught 



232 BAYS SPENT ON 

a glimpse of the garden we had come to see 
through a statue-guarded gate, or a bit of terrace 
gleamed white above our heads. Then when we 
reached the topmost gate we entered. 

This villa at Trissino was one of the many 
possessions of Giangiorgio Trissino, a poet ot the 
fifteenth century. For a description of Giorgio's 
life and work I here make some extracts from my 
father's " History of the Italian Renaissance." He 
begins with a comparison between Trissino and 
Tasso : — 

" Bernardo Tasso is the representative of a class 
which was common in Renaissance Italy, when 
courtiers and men of affairs devoted their leisure 
to study, and composed poetry upon scholastic 
principles. His epic failed precisely through the 
qualities for which he prized it. Less the product 
of inspiration than pedantic choice, it bore the taint 
of languor and unpardonable dulness. Giangiorgio 
Trissino, in the circumstances of his life no less than 
in the nature of his literary work, bears a striking 
resemblance to the Amadigi. The main difference 
between the two men is that Trissino adopted by 
preference the career of diplomacy into which poverty 
drove Tasso. He was born at Vicenza in 1478, or 
wealthy and noble ancestors, from whom he inherited 
vast estates. His mother was Cecilia, of the Bevilacqua 
family. During his boyhood Trissino enjoyed fewer 



A DOGE'S FARM 233 

opportunities of study than usually fell to the lot of 
young Italian nobles. He spent his time in active 
exercises ; and it was only in 1 506 that he began his 
education in earnest. 

" Trissino's inclination towards literature induced 
him to settle at Milan, where he became a pupil 
of veteran Demetrius Calcondylas. He cultivated 
the society of learned men, collected MSS., and 
devoted himself to the study of Greek philosophy. 
From the first he showed the decided partiality for 
erudition which was destined to rule his future 
career. But scholars at that epoch, even though 
they might be men of princely fortune, had little 
chance of uninterrupted leisure. Trissino's estates 
gave him for a while as much trouble as poverty 
had brought on Tasso. Vicenza was allotted to the 
Empire in 1 509 ; and afterwards, when the city gave 
itself to the Venetian Republic, Trissino^s adherence 
to Maximilian^s party cost him some months of 
exile in Germany, and the temporary confiscation 
of his property. Between 15 10 and 15 14, after 
his return from Germany, but before he made his 
peace with Venice, Trissino visited Ferrara, Florence, 
and Rome. These years determined his life as a 
man of letters. The tragedy of Sofonisba^ which was 
written before 15 15, won for its author a place 
among the foremost poets of the time. The same 
period decided his future as a courtier. Leo X. 



234 BAYS SPENT ON 

sent him on a mission to Bavaria, and upon his 
return procured his pardon from the Republic of 
St. Mark. There is not much to be gained by 
following the intricate details of Trissino's public 
career. After Leo's death he was employed by 
Clement VII. and Paul III. He assisted at the 
coronation of Charles V., and on this occasion was 
made Knight and Count. Gradually he assumed the 
style of a finished courtier ; and though he never 
took pay from his Papal or princely masters, no poet 
carried the art of adulation further. 

*' This self-subjection to the annoyances and in- 
dignities of Court life is all the more remarkable 
because Trissino continued to live like a great noble. 
When he travelled he was followed by a retinue of 
servants. A chaplain attended him for the celebration 
of Mass. His litter was furnished with silver plate, 
and with all the conveniences of a magnificent house- 
hold. His own cook went before, with couriers, to 
prepare his table ; and the equipage included a train 
of sumpter mules and serving-men in livery. At 
home in his palace at Vicenza, or among his numerous 
villas, he showed no less magnificence. Upon the 
building of one country house at Cricoli, which he 
designed himself, and surrounded with the loveliest 
Italian gardens, enormous sums were spent ; and 
when the structure was completed he opened it to 
noble friends, who lived with him at large and formed 



A DOGE'S FARM 235 

an academy, called after him La Trissinlana. Trissino 
was, moreover, a diligent student and a lover of 
solitude. He spent many years of his life upon the 
island of Murano, in a villa secluded from the world, 
and open to none but a few guests of similar tastes. 
Yet in spite of the advantages which fortune gave 
him, in spite of his studious habits, he could not 
resist the attraction which Courts at that epoch 
exercised over men of birth and breeding throughout 
Europe. He was for ever returning to Rome, 
although he expressed the deepest horror for the 
corruptions of that sinful city. No sooner had he 
established himself in quiet among the woods and 
streams of the Vicentine lowlands, or upon the breast 
of the Venetian lagunes, than the hankering to shine 
before a Prince came over him, and he resumed his 
march to Ferrara, or made his bow once more in the 
Vatican. 

" The end of Trissino's life was troubled by a 
quarrel with his son Giulio, in which it is difficult 
to decide whether the father or the son is most 
to blame. . . . Whatever may have been the crimes 
of Giulio against his father, Trissino used a cruel 
and unpardonable revenge upon his elder son. Not 
content with blackening his character under the name 
of Agrilupo in the halia Liberata^ he wrote a codicil 
to his will, in which he brought against Giulio the 
most dangerous charge it was then possible to make. 



236 DAYS SPENT ON 

He disinherited him with a curse, and accused him of 
Lutheran heresy. It was clearly his father's intention 
to hand his son down to an immortality of shame in 
his great poem, to ruin him in his temporal affairs, 
and to deprive him of his ecclesiastical privileges. 
Posterity has defeated his purpose, for few indeed are 
the readers of Trissino's Italia Liber ata^ 

I have quoted thus at length, for it strikes me that 
the character and work of Giorgio are strangely in 
accord with his gardens at Trissino — anxious imita- 
tions of a dead art. The rococo statues round the 
ponds resemble their Greek ancestors as little as 
Giorgio's Italia Liberata did the great epic of Homer. 
Yet they both have charm. And I think that the 
poet-courtier of the Renaissance, with his fine 
carriages, his learned friends, his chaplain and his 
cooks, must have visited this villa as well as the one 
at Cricoli, or on the island of Murano. After a 
lapse of four whole centuries some trace still lingers 
of their passage. One feels their footsteps on the 
sunny terraces. Court scandals hover, together with 
imitation classics, under the cedars of Lebanon and 
through the hornbeam alleys. 

A. and I waited long for the villa gates to be 
opened. Then we entered the garden, and an odd 
impression seized me that we were in an artificial 
landscape. This was owing to the fact that the real 
hill had been banked up in order to form a flat piece 



A DOGE'S FARM 237 

of ground for the house, and all its angles had been 
smoothed away and adapted to the use of man by 
man's hand. On the back terrace there were beds 
of flaming zinnias ; whilst under the northern wall 
there was a shimmer like moonlight over blue 
hydrangea blossoms. 

The house in itself is only one long, narrow line 
of building, with one small wing containing a single 
room at either end. All the windows open upon 
the front. There appear to be no passages, and the 
arrangements must be distracting when the lady of 
Trissino entertains a house-party. The front of the 
house is encompassed by a high balcony or terrace 
raised from the level of the lower garden on a series 
of stone arcades. Thus one can walk round a perfect 
square. The house forms one side of this square, 
the other is made by a hanging garden, the two 
flanks being nothing but thin arcades hidden in 
creepers. In the middle is a green courtyard, below 
the parks, the terraces, and gardens, and beyond the 
view. 

You may wander far in many lands and see no 
such view as that from Trissino. To the south one's 
eye is carried down the broad valley of the Agno, 
which winds round Montecchio, and is lost in the 
faint blue haze of Lombardy. Behind the impene- 
trable Alps bar all horizon — huge weather-beaten 
crags, soaring like guardian eagles with snow upon 



238 DAYS SPENT ON 

their plumage, above the sunny slopes of Italy. You 
can sit there on the raised garden gazing at the 
spectacle, with wild thyme blowing round your 
feet, and below you on the terraces a wilderness 
of oleanders and pomegranates, of lemon-trees and 
orange. For of these trees the garden is full, and in 
July at midday there was such a colour, such a scent 
and blaze, I almost thought myself back in the 
regions of an old impossible fairy-tale. I tried in 
vain to sketch any of its splendours, and then sub- 
mitted to be taken through the house, which, like 
most houses one is " shown over," greatly oppressed 
me. There seemed to be an amazing amount of beds 
in that villa, where the passing stranger can picture 
nothing less romantic than guitars and nightingales 
after sundown. There was a surprising lack of 
geniality or comfort in these interminable rooms. 
The excellence of the prints upon the wall, the beauty 
of damask upon the chairs, were hopelessly obscured 
by their framings. Yet this earthly paradise might 
have been made one equally within and without. Its 
present owners prefer the city. *' Up to the villa " 
they only come in autumn, and the cool air, the 
delicious fountains, the splendour of the flowers, 
are ignored by the inhabitants of a palace '* down 
in the city " of Vicenza. 

We gladly returned to the garden, and explored 
some few of its fascinating corners. Here were alleys 



A DOGE'S FARM 239 

of hornbeam trees interlaced like Gothic arches, dark 
leafy places with unfathomable views of sky and 
plain caught through their windows. And here was 
a terrace, some two hundred yards in length, where 
oranges and lemons grew from big terra-cotta vases, 
and gardenia and heliotrope sprang up to meet them 
from the lower beds. All the white pebbles at our 
feet were strewn with little flames from the fallen 
flowers of pomegranate trees. But it is impossible to 
convey any just idea of these Italian terraces to those 
who have not seen them. I think that in a spot like 
this History first gave birth to Romance. 

We then left the upper garden. A. had for the 
time become a child again, whose baby feet had 
toddled down these paths. He laughed, he screamed, 
he pulled pomegranate petals, and, spreading out his 
priestly robes, he ran so quickly down the pebbly 
paths I scarcely could keep pace with him. We 
passed through grottoes in the rock, cypress avenues, 
and cedars of Lebanon, until we issued through the 
ruins of the first villa which was struck by lightning 
many years ago, and came out upon the lake of 
Trissino. It is purely artificial, this lake, but I 
confess to a belief that no natural thing could be 
more fair. There is a large green plateau of about 
two acres, overgrown with grass and daisy flowers. 
In its middle is an immense stone basin full to its 
brim of water. Here a million gold-fish trifle with 



240 BAYS SPENT ON 

the sun, and here the clouds are mirrored ; here, too, 
a hundred lovers must have told their loves. There 
are statues — statues everywhere, rising at intervals 
along the pond, standing in rows along the parapets 
against the sky. They are grey rococo things, 
these statues. They bear resemblance to no human 
form or living creature. Eaten by time, carved at 
a wrong period of the arts, they are still entirely 
delightful. A shepherdess with a hat chopped off, 
stuck on awry, a Jove, a Juno, a Sophocles, I know 
not what, but all bathed in the light of an Italian 
afternoon, with growing grass about their feet, water 
and gold-fish, behind the cypress avenues, beyond 
the view. 

With immense unwillingness we left that garden 
and returned to the street. Other gardens there 
may be in other hills, but none can have the charm 
peculiar to the garden there at Trissino. 

We went into the church which stands on the very 
crest of the hill. Then we went on to visit the 
friends of A.'s youth. I have already lingered too 
long within the shades of Trissino, and the home 
of these people deserves a longer description than I 
can give it. 

We entered a cool house with big stone halls and 
staircases. Here a whole family was assembled in 
the Italian fashion to receive us. I, being the only 
lady guest, occupied the guest sofa, where I sat 



A DOGE'S FARM 241 

enthroned, relating my age and the price of my hat 
to my hostesses, and evading the too lavish hospitality 
of my exacting hosts. There was the father of the 
family, a magnificent gentleman with the face of a 
hawk ; and his lady, on whose brow and portly figure 
Time had left no saddening lines. Their two grown- 
up daughters sat beside them ; their student son 
served out the wine and cakes ; and there was a little 
fair-haired grandson too. He rode a bicycle round 
the outer hall, and in and out of the parlour. Eve, 
the dark-eyed daughter, sat down to a jingling 
harpsichord into which her fingers brought a sudden 
soul. Outside a fountain splashed in the garden, 
and big tea-roses pushed in through the half-closed 
shutters. The son was a philosopher, but he copied 
Rembrandt, and also touched the harpsichord. As it 
grew cooler we went out into the garden, and sat in a 
green arbour, discussing the outsides of the universe. 
The daughters showed me their rooms, with stone 
floors, and iron frameworks embossed with roses and 
carnations in the place of washing-stands. No com- 
fort was there in the apartment of the lovely Eve, 
but truly a painter's bedroom in the style of that 
Carpaccio gave St. Ursula. 

It was now past four, and time to bid adieu to 
Trissino. The philosopher son accompanied us to 
our inn. He spoke with gaiety of life. He might 
have posed as a model for a rococo faun upon the 

16 



242 DAYS SPENT ON 

fountains up above, so unreal and pleasing a being 
did he seem. Fancy a philosophic faun ! I almost 
believe, though, that he was one. He talked more 
readily of the mask he wore on Christmas Eve in 
the streets of Padua than of the studies he pursued 
within that city ; and as we ran fast down that 
pebbly street his feet seemed like those of a hind, 
and A. puffed hopelessly in the rear. 

We stayed to see some very beautiful ironworks 
in a small shop outside the town, then we drove on 
to Tavernelle, stopping in a thicket of the Venetian 
sumach to gather branches of that tree, hoping to 
convey it home with us. But the feathery fluff flew 
off, leaving the rounded leaves and bitter scent. The 
ground seemed literally full of herbs ; southernwood 
abounded with silver thyme and rue ; and here we 
found a large bushy clematis with a flower like that 
of a lemon. Indeed, the hills around Montecchio 
struck me as being well worth the visit of a botanist. 
Their fossils are, I believe, world-known. Mon- 
tecchio was more awake in the evening hours, and 
buckets were in full swing around the wells. Every 
mile which separated me from Trissino was a sorrow. 
The last I saw of that delicious green paese was a 
dark mass of trees upon a spur of hill fallen asleep in 
meadows, and behind the mighty jags of Tyrol. 

The plain seemed horribly hot. The train had 
been baking all the way from Milan. But there 



A DOGE'S FARM 243 

comes a happy period in a hot day when you are 
able to ignore its degrees of temperature. I suppose, 
too, that after fourteen hours of constant *' go,'* the 
human casserole refuses to boil, and assumes an even 
measure. 

Vicenza looked a little rosier, a little more ideal, if 
that were possible, and the Monti Berici smiled as the 
sunset light covered them in a veil of gold. Bodies 
of huge clouds arose in bubbling piles, and, receiving 
the light of the setting sun upon their snowy breasts, 
flushed pink and golden, as did the earth, the mul- 
berry-trees, the sulphur on the vines, the oxen at the 
plough. Thunderstorms were rolling heavily towards 
the sea, but all the western sky was clear and quiet. 

We waited half an hour in Padua, leaving again 
towards nine. Still there was daylight in the sky, 
and the Santo*s domes stood clear and blue against 
a bank of inky storm. An orange belt of intensest 
colour lay along the west, fork lightning played in 
and out of the east, and between the two sailed 
a large half-moon into the blue of coming night. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

ON THE BANKS OF THE ADIGE AND PALAZZO ROSSO 

" Guai a voi quel giorno quando TAdige s'alza dal letto." — 
Paleocapa. 

YY/E always found a cool wind there — a breath 

^^ of melting icicles carried down on the back of 

the river from the eternal snows where its waters 

had found their birth some days, some hours back. 

Right through Gromboolia it runs, a mighty body 

covering a tempestuous soul. Lombard grasses, 

Lombard willows, rank tangles of a hundred 

southern plants flourish along its banks and bend 

to kiss the cooling flood. But it, remembering a 

mountain flora, bearing the embrace of primulas, of 

gentian, and of white sprayed saxifrage upon its lips, 

brushes these coarse plants a little roughly, as it 

seems, and goes its terrific way, swelling in enormous 

curves, with never a sound of wave, with no ripple 

against a stone, for its bed is spread with sand. A 

huge power suppressed, moving always onward to 

explore the Adriatic. Perhaps the same drops 

244 



DAYS SPENT ON A DOGE'S FARM 245 

which filtered through a wooden pump in some distant 
village of the Tyrol will play about the feet of the 
Rialto or lap the steps of Doges' palaces in Venice. 

For hours one can lie and wonder near those 
green shores. There is something undeniably en- 
larging to the human mind in the contemplation of 
big rivers. This platitude is so stale that I ought 
not to dish it up to a satiated public ; only the 
Adige, in its crossing of the plain, filled my mind 
with large and strange comparisons. 

A road runs along the top of either bank ; and 
here for ever the donkey-carts crawl slowly, and 
the white oxen lumber by — great quiet beasts with 
an interminable calm in their dark eyes. Here 
small gigs rattle through the dust — a farmer or 
a hersagliere lounging in the right-hand corner — 
and peasant girls and children shuffle onward with 
bare feet. Always the same black mills for grinding 
corn float upon the current, and swifts fly screaming 
over and across. 

On either side you see the tops or towers, and far 
below the plain. There is the terror of the thing. 
The Adige runs through no deep river-bed, but over 
an artificial mountain made by its own mad diggings 
on the hills. So when you drive along this road 
you look down upon all other roads — down almost 
upon the hills — and familiar objects are shown to 
you mapped out in squares. 



246 



BAYS SPENT ON 



I experienced an awful joy in driving myself 
along these banks. There, on midsummer after- 
noons, we rattled through the heavy sand. The 
Oracle might sit beside me and tell me of his 
veterinary successes in Vienna : I heard him not ; 
I breathed deep of the cold delicious breath of that 
big river. It half maddened me. I saw phantoms 
of cool glacier caves, and little Alpine flowers grown 
in deep ravines. A desire possessed my soul to 











ON THE BANKS OF THE ADIGE. 



be amongst them. Gromboolia seemed so hot, so 
terribly hot and flat. I almost was disloyal to my 
southern love. 

But this drive was a forbidden fruit, like my night- 
watches on the balcony. It could only be performed 
by stratagem and very rarely. These sunny boule- 
vards have seen many mortal tragedies, and the 
Contessa and the Oracle shuddered at them. 
Usually I came under the shadow of the Adige by 



A DOGE'S FARM 247 

the high-road or the small canals. I was always 
glad to come, as the Adige combined a visit to 
Palazzo Rosso, and Palazzo Rosso is an enchanted 
place. It fulfilled all my ideals of Gromboolian 
palaces. 

This Palazzo is a broad square house built of 
red brick. It has small marble arches over the 
windows, and a flight of crumbling marble steps, 
arcaded halls and passages full of cool air. Once 
it commanded a view of the Adige, now it is 
shadowed and smothered by the colossal banks of 
that great river, which have been gradually grow- 
ing ever since it was built, and one must climb to 
its topmost garrets to obtain a view of the yellow 
flood. The house was built originally for a member 
of the Pisani family. Its style is more beautiful and 
picturesque, its colouring more pleasing to the eye 
than that of Vescovana. It is the largest farm on 
the Pisani estates, and has the richest land. Once I 
went gleaning there, and in a few minutes I amassed 
colossal sheaves. For centuries it had been in the 
hands of tenant farmers. These people are not 
always of a scrupulous turn of mind, and the whole 
thing was gradually sinking into a state of decay and 
ruin. There were more bats than people in the 
palatial halls, the fields refused to render their due 
increase, their very hearts being squeezed dry year after 
year by planting the same crops in the same fields. 



248 BAYS SPENT ON 

So Palazzo Rosso to my mind was a pleasing wilder- 
ness. I delighted in its desolation which the Contessa 
viewed with such disdain. One year I returned to 
the Doge's Farm and found that the pink palace by 
the Adige was in the hands of its mistress. Lean 
cattle were replaced by fat ones within its stables, 
the fields had been left fallow for a season, the hedges 
clipped, the ditches cleaned, the bats, the cobwebs, 
and the bricks evicted with the tenant from its airy 
halls. Indeed, the familiar "system'' was already 
permeating the whole. I could not review with 
proper kindness all these changes, until I considered 
that no one could change the palace-front or alter 
the flow of the Adige, and many of my happiest 
hours were still to be spent at Palazzo Rosso. 

Our time there was always too short, and we left 
it with regret. We had a drive of over eight miles 
from Vescovana. When we arrived in front ot the 
stables I visited some favourite calves and an ancient 
bull without a tail, and then ran up the high banks 
of the Adige and lay down amongst the vetches and 
white clover which grew to its very brink. The 
grasses grew so tall and green above my head. The 
waters sang and murmured over the sand in the river- 
bed, and the immense sky shone. But the Oracle 
never left me long in contemplation of the Adige. 
He considered it a most pernicious folly. His 
black coat and impressive buttons appeared above 



A DOGE'S FARM 249 

the grasses ; words of warning and a summons to 
tea called me away from the river and its dreams. 
Tea at Palazzo Rosso was an occasione. The 
whole palace was gradually being cleaned, but in a 
cool upper room the Contessa had put a big deal 
table, some chairs, and a cupboard. There were 
cotton curtains in the window, but its ledges were of 
marble, and its view reached over Lombardy. In 
the cupboard we kept a spirit-lamp and tea. The 
salad sandwiches we brought with us in a piece 
of paper. The Contessa made the tea herself. I 
never tasted any like it. We drank it out of bowls 
which looked like doge's caps, and we sat on cheap 
and comfortable chairs. The plate had been bought 
in Milan. It shone like silver, and each piece cost 
from twenty to seventy centimes. The air was 
unusually cool in that abandoned palace. I wished 
we could have felt more absolutely like tinkers 
encamping in ducal halls. As it was we were 
propria rustica^ as a young gentleman of the 
neighbourhood said to me concerning his bark- 
arbour. Sometimes the evicted tenant joined us — 
once a sarcastic priest. The Oracle thought us 
very low when at the end of this humble orgie 
he was commanded to bring in a copper secchio 
full of water. He could have cried to see his 
mistress dipping in the tea-things with her own 
pink finger-tips. 



250 DAYS SPENT ON 

Tea over, I was able to leave the Contessa and the 
bailiffs to their tempestuous parleys, and to penetrate 
a certain waste and marshy land which was entirely 
overgrown by bulrushes and tall pink grasses. In 
Gromboolia bulrush seeds are collected, dried, and 
used for stuffing pillows. The down is very soft and 
warm. There may be bulrushes in England, but 
indeed they cannot attain to the colossal dimensions 
of those it was my privilege to gather on the marshes 
round Palazzo Rosso. 

• • • • • 

Once on an autumn night a drama was enacted in 
Gromboolia. 

It had poured and poured with rain for many days, 
and always it went on pouring. Up in the Alps the 
torrents had broken loose, and were hurling down 
their floods and boulders over the meadows. 

The Adige was swollen, yellow, ghastly, but still, 
by its banks, restrained. A dread and a terror were in 
the minds of the people on the plain. They went 
up in the evening to the top of the banks and looked. 
Then they crept down, for a shudder passed through 
them. 

And still it poured. 

At midnight a gig rattled up to the gates of a 
lonely villa on the plain. 

** The river has broken on the Rovigo side," said 
the man inside. *'The people are mad — they are 



A DOGE'S FARM 251 

coming across to open our lock, and let the flood 
into our land as well as their own. It's a horrible 
flood — but why should both sides perish ? " 

The lady of the villa arose. She ordered her 
horses, and she drove through the dark and the 
blinding rain. At dawn she stood on the banks of 
the Adige beside her lock. 

She was a woman, but she stood there alone. And 
*' Shoot, then, shoot ! " she cried to the men on the 
opposite bank of the river. 

They were all there, half mad with fear. They 
had their guns pointed at her, but they didn't shoot, 
and the flood went over their land and not over 
hers. 

In the daylight the lady went back to her villa, 
and the troops came down from Milan and guarded 
her locks. 

The fields of Gromboolia were dry. 



CHAPTER XIX 

IN THE EUGANEAN HILLS 

" Ay, many flowering islands lie 
In the waters of wide Agony : 
To such a one this morn was led, 
My bark, by soft winds piloted : 
'Mid the mountains Euganean 
I stood listening to the paean. 
With which the legioned rocks did hail 
The sun's uprise majestical ; 
Gathering round with wings all hoar, 
Through the dewy mist they soar 
Like grey shades, till the eastern heaven 
Bursts, and then — as clouds of even 
Flecked with fire and azure, lie 
In the unfathomable sky — 
So their plumes of purple grain. 
Starred with drops of golden rain. 
Gleam above the sunlight woods." . . . 

^^ Lines written among the Euganean Hills" by P. B. Shelley. 

A CHANGE had come across the plain. A dead 
-^^ calm haze of heat had clung about the sky for 
days without the vestige of a cloud, without a ruffle 
of wind amongst the drooping leaves, save sometimes 

at midday a tiny timorous breeze. There was a 

252 





Photo by Ai r. W. W. Vaiighan 

THE PERGOLA OF SHELLEY'S VILLA AT ESTE IN THE EUGANEAN HILLS 



Tofacepagt 253 



DA YS SPENT ON A DOGE'S FARM 253 

feeling of suspense in Nature's doings. The harvest 
fields were deserted even of gleaners. Gromboolia 
had sunk back into absolute silence and apparent 
solitude, save where by some farm the threshing- 
machine was working still, and a centre of life and 
bustle reigned. 

One new beauty, however, was revealed on the bare 
and sun-baked breast of nature — that of the flowering 
Indian corn. Over every maize-field there was seen 
a shimmer of tasselled bloom. For miles and miles 
between ploughed fields the crop was ripening its 
pollen. There are few things more lovely than this 
blossom. Silver, gilded, grey, and opal green, com- 
posed of the tiniest flowerets, it rises above the tall 
forest of stalk and ribbon leaf, and lends a character 
new and pleasing to the countenance of the plain. 

Already a touch of yellow — a half suspicion of 
autumn — had crept in amongst the spring green of 
acacias, and a crimson leaf was no rare sight upon 
the vine. In the ditches there was scarcely any 
water left — in the garden not a rose. 

I now began to think with joy of a visit to the 
hills. In the blue Euganeans, which for so many 
weeks we had seen, quiet, gentle forms rising out of 
the plain, I pictured to myself a hundred fresh delights, 
and so determined to embark on travel. 

A month ago, amidst a blare of trumpets and a 
clash of unmelodious cornets, the two young English 



254 BAYS SPENT ON 

ladies had arrived in the Doge's Farm, and invited 
me to visit them in the Euganeans. I had never 
seen these ladies before, nor had I seen them since. 
They descended " unbeknownst " in their tiny gig at 
sunset from out the distant hills : they left again at 
dawn. But I had treasured their invitation within 
my heart, and watched the wandering of the moon 
till she should be full once more, and fit to guide us 
on the ascent of Venda. Then all my desires went 
out to Teolo and the tops of its high hills. I 
mustered courage, and wrote a note to my unknown 
friends, saying I did not care for milk or meat — the 
absence of which details they had lamented. I asked 
them only not to refuse my company for a night or 
two. In return for this boldness I received the 
kindest note of welcome, and a promise to meet 
me at Abano. 

My friends and all the potentates of the dogedom 
shook their heads. Teolo, they said, was a heathenish 
ciUa, also it was neither customary nor fit for sig- 
norine to travel in this neighbourhood alone. 

I packed a modest hold-all, and drove Bandis to 
the station — in fact I was bent on going, and so 
defied Gromboolian conventionalities and went. 

The stationmaster gave me a cool, empty carriage 
to myself, with strict commands to the guard that 
no one should enter it. It was awfully hot in that 
train, and as for the *' blue hills " they might have 




■^ 



A DOGE'S FARM 255 

been back in their primitive condition of burning 
volcanoes. They were dry and baked around their 
feet as though the plain were sucking dry their dewy 
streams. Arrived at Abano, 1 left the train and 
looked in vain for the ladies of Teolo. They were 
not there, but an elderly and affable carpenter 
presented himself with a note from them, regretting 
that as the drive was over two hours long they could 
not embark upon it at midday. So I got into the 
high gig of the carpenter, and rattled off through an 
avenue of plane-trees, full of the sense of adventure. 
A most miniature pony — a little adorable mouse of a 
creature — dragged us, and the carpenter enlivened 
the drive with excellent conversation. The country 
round Abano had been visited by a hailstorm the 
night before, and trees and crops were terribly 
tattered. Our wheels ran smoothly over a carpet 
of green leaves strewn in the dust. The heat was 
indescribable. Gromboolia paled by comparison. 
But the mouse trotted along at a great rate, and 
presently, to my surprise and joy, Praglia appeared 
above its walls. The carpenter suggested that I 
should go in and see the convent, to which proposal 
I gladly acceded. 

There was an elegant gentleman loafing about 
under a white umbrella in the first cloister. He 
assisted me to alight from that very inelegant gig, 
and seemed anxious to divert his leisure hours in 



256 DAYS SPENT ON 

conversation. But having no notion of who he was, 
I ignored his attentions, accepting instead those of a 
clown who issued from a neighbouring stable with 
the keys. The carpenter was moody, and regretted 
the society of the swell, who, he hastened to inform 
me, was the present proprietor of Praglia. For me 
it was pleasure sufficient to penetrate once more the 
mazes of that immense convent. It was built to 
hold over three hundred monks. It has six huge 
cloisters, two of which are built around the first 
storey, the centre of which, paved with massive 
stones, made one imagine oneself to be upon the 
basement. Terra-cotta friezes of intricate designs 
run under the tiled roofs, and wide views across the 
plain delight one's eyes at the end of each corridor. 
The place is still in pretty good condition, but every 
year will add to its decay. 

At the east end of the refectory there is a 
Crucifixion by Montagna, perfectly preserved. Few 
portraits of St. John appear to me as full of soul and 
beauty as this one. With hands thrown back and 
eyes uplifted, St. John gazes In sorrow but In faith 
upon his dying Saviour. The carving, too, is fine 
in this long room, and angels cut in chestnut wood 
glow along the walls. 

My companions were deeply appreciative. The 
carpenter was every inch a courtier. About the 
clown there hung the remnants of a dead gentility. 



A DOGE'S FARM 257 

It is his duty to keep some miles of passages and 
cells free from too much dirt. He was rather rough 
in his handling of sacred objects, and knocked down 
an archangel over the door of the refectory in his 
efforts to shut it tight. But he showed us a piece 
of painting I had missed before at Praglia — a 
Flagellation by Montagna. It is painted on the wall 
behind a closed bookcase. A thing more delicate in 
colouring, or more sweet in spirit, I have rarely seen. 
Hybiscus bushes were flowering wildly in the lower 
cloisters. Great flapping butterflies of pallid hues, 
these blossoms seemed, upon their darker foliage. 

On leaving Praglia we bade adieu to the plain, 
and wound round the feet of that series of wooded 
volcanoes — the Euganean Hills. The flowers were 
very abundant and beautiful. Here were nice shady 
villas and cooling streams : dense pergolas of vine 
drooped in festoons above the doors of peasants' 
houses. And oh the songs of the cicalas ! 

But the chief thing which struck me on the drive 
was the glory of shadow. I could not at first dissect 
what thing it was which so satisfied my eye in that 
new country. Then, looking further, I realised that 
huge masses of blue shade were cast abroad, not from 
the vanishing clouds, but by the solid hills them- 
selves. In Lombardy there can be no shade like 
this till that of the night covers it. So this is one 
of the greatest charms of mountain country. Much 

17 



258 DAYS SPENT ON 

as we mortals love the light, and need it, we enjoy it 
most by contrast. 

We now reached the foot of Monte Grande, 
on the shoulder of which hill Teolo is built. The 
ascent is long, but the road most excellent, ascending 
in broad, smooth curves like those on a Swiss pass. 
Ailanthus-trees spread fan-like leaves on either side, 
and innumerable flowers grow on the chalky soil. 
Here the everlasting pea drags its long creeping 
stems, studded with pink bloom, over the bushes 
and paths, and tall blue campanulas push through 
trailing clematis. Pinks, white, red, and feathery, 
grow here in all their glory ; but how such fine and 
tender flowers can exist on that sun-baked soil is 
to me a marvel. 

We drove through the village of Teolo. In the 
courtyard of the inn a party of fine Venetians were 
eating macaroni. It was evident that the ** season " 
had set in. Ages had elapsed since last I slept there 
among the silkworms. 

The carpenter and the mouse rattled down a deep 
lane, and then through some massive stone portals, 
and I alighted at the door of the Casa Baccaglini. 

This is the residence of the sindaco of Teolo. 
It is built for all the world in the manner of a 
Swiss hospice — only with this difference, that it 
stands on the spurs of the most romantic and 
verdurous hills in Northern Italy. It is a grey 



A DOGE'S FARM 259 

farmhouse. The rough stones look as though 
storm and frost were not unheard-of visitors in 
these dreamy regions. A troop of geese, a couple 
of cows, and many natives stray for ever in and 
out of its crumbling gates. Its owner, the sindaco^ 
alternately sleeps, eats, cooks at fairs, performs both 
field and ministerial labours, or talks philosophy and 
gossips with his guests. His younger brother enjoys 
the same large intellect and capacity for taking part 
in every phase of human life. These two charming 
old bachelors live, so to speak, on the fat of the 
land. Their sister, a nun, whose health forces her 
to abandon her convent cell, cooks their meals and 
does some of the housework, and their little niece 
runs in and out of the hospice like a fairy creature. 
They were indeed a charming family, amongst whose 
midst it was a privilege to dwell : and the whole 
mysterious menage struck me as being admirably 
arranged. For the four English ladies had brought 
with them an Udine chef and his Tuscan wife. 
The casseroles of the cook, and the boot-trees of 
his mistresses, mixed to perfection with the earthen 
pots and sabots of the two bachelors and the nun. 
Miss D., in a large sun-bonnet, met me at the 
door. The rest of the party were taking an Italian 
lesson with the village schoolmistress. We sat 
down in a hot passage to tea, at which meal the 
others presently appeared. They were all very 



26o BAYS SPENT ON 

quiet and kind and nice to talk to but it was absolutely 
unlike Gromboolia. 

We immediately started forth upon a long walk 
up an indescribably steep hill. The atmosphere 
was boiling hot, but an icy wind blew through 
my light silk clothing of the plain, which garment 
speedily became a rag amongst the rose-thorns and 
the brushwood. We found the large wild rose 
of the Euganeans growing here in great abundance, 
and tall trees of myrtle scented the air as we crushed 
it in our scrambles. We entered a curious damp 
cave by the light of a single candle, which was soon 
extinguished in the clammy air, leaving us to 
scramble back through muddy ways. These very 
novel sensations from rock and chilly moisture were 
most refreshing. 

In the late evening we returned to Teolo for 
supper. We were gleefully told by a Baccaglini 
brother that the table had been spread on the 
summit of a neighbouring hill. Thither we at 
once proceeded, and took our seats in the long 
grass round a square table. As a stormy night 
had set in, the air was like pitch. But garlands of 
hop and ivy were artistically hung from poles above 
our heads by the Udine chef, and that gentleman 
had further shown great skill in the composition 
of six Chinese lanterns which cast a lurid light 
upon our faces, With the first course came a clap 



A DOGE'S FARM 261 

of thunder and a sheet of rain. We were compelled 
to seize our plates and precipitate ourselves upon 
the hospice. The table, the ivy, the hops, and 
the lanterns were seized by various natives, and 
followed us into the house, where our meal was then 
completed. 

A native concert followed, and not till a late hour 
did we retire to bed. Sleep was at first out of the 
question, and not till long after the dawn had 
deadened the minds of night visitors did I obtain 
some short repose. For all the mosquitoes and 
midges of Gromboolia were taking their villeg- 
giatura at Teolo. Never have I been put to 
such a test of human endurance, realising at last 
the drawbacks to tropical travel, but also its com- 
pensations in the sights I saw. 

The young ladies of Teolo led the artistic life 
absolutely. They gave their souls to Nature and 
explored her most unknown paths. In fact they 
courted A.'s enemy — fever — in every possible 
manner. They rose at 3.30 a.m., and proceeded 
out among the misty hills to paint dewy Paduan 
landscapes till seven, when they returned to 
coffee (milk is attainable, butter scarce in Teolo). 
They then returned to their work till ten, when 
they entered the hospice and slept till twelve, 
at which hour they ate their midday meal of 
vegetables, pumpkin salads, and, if possible, some 



262 DAYS SPENT ON 

meat. They returned to their beds till four, took 
tea and painted till eight, when, absolutely worn 
out, as one would imagine, they ascended to the 
summit of that little hill, where, in high grasses 
amidst the rising mists and heavy dew, their thin 
clothes covered by filmy Eastern shawls, they sat 
around the ivy-covered table, to pick at viands 
strange and new. 

For the Udine chef was an artist in all things. 
He dished up no common viands, or unenticing 
puddings. His " plats '* approached the miraculous. 
His beef assumed the plumage of a swan, his ginger- 
bread was piled in Gothic arches, the windows of 
which were illuminated from within by unseen 
candles. Also he made fire-balloons, which sailed 
into the starlit sky to divert our attention between 
his courses. His wife in the meantime, with an 
orange kerchief tied square above her calm and 
very beautiful face, would sometimes sing us sad, 
slow love-songs. 

Every night, too, the boy-musicians of Teolo 
would come playing up the lane from out the 
village, and these concerts made a deep impression 
on the audience. I shall often long to hear again 
those bird-like occarini — those little thrilling songs 
with madness in their chorus. 

The young English ladies and their mother had 
a wonderful love for the native, which was evidently 



A DOGE'S FARM 263 

returned. The small boys had been encouraged 
by them to use their musical gifts in harmony, 
not each alone in the fields. And the result 
was very charming. They play the occarino to 
perfection in these parts. That instrument is 
made for the open air and woody places. It is 
like the warbling of small birds, or gurgling 
streams in spring. 

The orchestra of small brown boys sat gravely 
in a circle on the grass. Their repertoire was small, 
but then it was perfect. An inspired baker sat in 
their midst. He had the voice of an archangel, 
and sang long songs between-whiles, his head 
thrown back, his eyes closed in an ecstasy ; and 
when his song was finished in came the occarini 
like little birds singing at dawn when the nightin- 
gale has ceased. 

The music continued till the audience was too 
soaked by dew and bitten by mosquitoes, and the 
performers too hoarse and too satiated by wine, 
milk, and song to continue longer ; then towards 
eleven the Spartan ladies would allow themselves 
some four hours of repose. 

On Wednesday night there was to be no repose. 
On that night, or no other, we were to ascend 
Venda. The moon was waning fast. We needed 
every inch of her light for the rough ascent we 
contemplated. I cannot exaggerate the feeling of 



264 DAYS SPENT ON 

excitement and ioy which filled my soul when I 
realised the fact that one of my earliest day-dreams 
was to be fulfilled. Such things are certainly rare 
in life. 

When first I read Shelley's " Lines in the Euga- 
nean Hills " the desire seized me to watch the sun 
rise over Northern Italy from the highest point 
of those volcanic hills. For two days and nights 
it had rained off and on — sopping summer rain 
which damped our hopes as surely as it ate into 
the ears of Indian corn. But on that afternoon 
the clouds rolled off like whales into the western 
heaven. The night closed in hot and damp. The 
little boys played divinely, and then went off along 
the lane. We, too, retired to our rooms — but not 
to sleep. 

The Udine chefy who is also a physician, a philo- 
sopher, a singer, and a poet, pronounced rest before 
a night-walk to be a dangerous folly. Loud and 
melancholy songs arose, therefore, from himself and 
from his myrmidons in their precincts below our 
bedrooms until twelve, at which hour we hurried out 
to drink black coffee in the kitchen ; and at 12.30 
we started forth by the light of a feverish and 
waning moon along the slopes of Venda. 

Signor Baccaglini accompanied us as guide. The 
air was warm and heavy-weighted, like a summer 
afternoon in England. Our road lay at first through 



A DOGE'S FARM 265 

deep lanes, with hedges of acacia, dog-rose, and 
clematis on either hand. It was a broad, white 
road, ascending by easy curves to higher levels 
of chestnut grove. The country was peculiarly 
sad and still — if the mosquitoes of GrombooHa 
had come to live there, the nightingales had left 
it. The silence was profound. Before us the 
waning moon arose in a calm sky ; but at our 
backs a deep bank of thundercloud, driven on by 
a thin hot wind, advanced steadily ; and in all 
directions fitful and flickering patches of sheet- 
lightning came and went. We passed through a 
dense chestnut wood, where the light of the moon 
cast an almost chalky shimmer over the leaves, 
whilst the immense trunks stood black against the 
lighter grass. Then we came to Castel Novo. The 
village was dead asleep, and every shutter barred 
against us. The small church contains an altar- 
piece by Paolo Veronese. The sindaco told us 
certain things about the doings of this artist, 
whom he proved to be a great canaille and maker 
of inferior pictures. At this point we left the 
road, and struck into the ill-kept tracks and 
watercourses of Venda. 

It was an intensely hot night. We had bur- 
dened ourselves with extra clothes. We stumbled 
up pebbly paths between hedges of dwarf acacia, 
muddy banks, and chestnut copse, which quite ob- 



266 DAYS SPENT ON 

scured the moonlight and muffled in the air. Below 
us, at intervals, we caught glimpses of vast plains 
bathed in owl light, and an awful sense of fever and 
oppression came puffing up from these plains and 
lingered in the hills. 

Six weeks of the above-described existence had 
not served to develop the walking powers of the 
young English ladies. They, however, walked 
bravely, but our guide, the sindaco, had lived 
too long on the fat of the hospice to be much 
of a mountaineer. He told me hopelessly that I 
was no Inglesina, but a Roman matron, from the 
development of the muscles in my feet. Some 
dogs attacked us with loud barking by lonely 
farms, where we stopped to rest, but they seemed 
frightened at the white dresses of my friends. We 
passed through stubble fields where the corn was 
stacked in heaps, and at length came out upon 
grass slopes and turfy mounds where the scent of 
thyme and bracken seemed to make the night air 
pure. I remember discussing with Miss M. at 
this point the rival merits of Mr. Rudyard Kipling 
and Mr. Henry James — so incongruous are the 
wanderings of the human mind and feet. 

At 2.30 we reached the top of Venda. The 
storm was rolling away again, driven by a keen wind 
from the east. The moon sailed clear and very 
bright through a deep blue sky. Great planets 



A DOGE'S FARM 267 

and constellations were dimmed by her radiance. 
But Mars shone like red blood. 

The top of Venda is very broad and flat. It 
is covered on the extreme summit by chestnut 
brush ; but all along the southern side runs an 
artificial plateau, the site of a huge convent and 
its grounds, now absolutely ruined and abandoned. 
That peculiarly smooth turf surrounds its ruins 
which adds so much to the charm of all mediaeval 
dwellings. The thin storm-wind still blew over the 
hill — a wind turned to ice — in the black night air. 
It hurried the plaster about in the ruins, and went 
on and away to wrestle with the heated north 
whence we had come. To escape it we crossed 
those pleasant lawns and entered the ruins. Large 
in the daylight, they now seemed colossal. The 
tottering remnants of what were once high walls 
rose up from the precipitous hill, black, still crags 
against the moon. 

We sat down on the grass-grown floor of the 
refectory. Its rose windows, bare now of traceries, 
let in owlish gleams upon the faces of my com- 
panions. Bushes of sweetbriar swayed in the breeze, 
and about the walls dead grasses rustled and shook 
down their seeds. Through this black frame of 
masonry one surveyed the lesser hills and the 
vast moonlit plain hundreds of feet below. A 
more romantic spot it would be hard to find in 



268 DAYS SPENT ON 

any corner of the globe, although, as I gather, 
ruins are out of fashion. But the chill and draught 
were terrible. Some of the party returned to the 
lawns, and there sank down in dreamy heaps upon 
their mackintoshes. Others felt happier on the 
move, and wandered away to the extreme point 
of Venda. We found all sorts of flowers under 
that clear moon — small anthericum lilies and pink 
vetches — and we rested on bushes of fraxinella. 

There, then, in the chestnut copse we watched 
the birth of day. 

After long waiting there came the dawn — a 
scarcely visible shimmer of white above the clouds 
in the eastern heaven : a thing which throbbed and 
trembled, seeming to shiver as it touched the 
reigning light of the moon. Even as you could 
not distinguish the exact birth of dawn, so it 
seemed impossible to trace its inevitable progress 
through the heavens. Only it struck me that for 
a minute the stars grew brighter, and everything 
became intensely cold and still. Then the wild 
thyme at our feet gave out a stronger scent, and 
one by one the watchers on the plain became aware 
of day. One by one church bells began to ring, 
till all the world seemed full of slow, sad, tinkling 
chimes, and the twittering of innumerable birds. 
Then these sounds died away. I saw that the 
moon was but a weak thing, and that the coming 
day was strangling her. 



A DOGE'S FARM 269 

At last the sun clambered up over a bank of 
heavy cloud — a dull orange god who robbed the 
world of mystery, but filled it full of truth and 
splendour. I think there was no detail which his 
gilded fingers did not handle. But it is impossible 
accurately to describe that spectacle, even though 
one watched it from the very centre of a mighty 
amphitheatre. Sitting on the highest point of the 
Euganean hills, I tried with all my might to mark 
the splendour of a sunrise in North Italy. 

First a vein of silver crept through the darkness 
along the western horizon : and that was the lagunes. 
Then against this line there started up a little hedge 
of inky needles : Venice and Chioggia ; the Lido 
next showed black upon that glittering water. 
Above them all the dawn vanished into the sun, 
and moon and planets died. 

The moment was so fleeting one scarce caught 
it. One's eyes followed a pageant far more subtle 
than any shown by man. The plain for some few 
minutes was grey and void of detail till the sun rose 
upon it too, and first its rays caressed small wreaths 
of mist which had formed round the foot of every 
little hill, and then gilded the vapours rising from 
hot springs at Abano and Montegrotto. Lastly, 
they flooded the plain. The whole land caught the 
light : waters and mists, fields and trees, shone 
together in the great glory of the sun. To the 



270 DAYS SPENT ON 

north-east the Alps stretched back, row upon row. 
You could count their scars and crags, and all their 
snows and watercourses, for in the whole air there 
was no mist. At a later hour these mountains 
vanished into purple shades, but at that instant 
their very hearts lay bare ; and as for Padua, every 
minaret and dome stood out distinct. To the north 
were the Monti Berici. Each town and villa shone 
white among its trees. Thus three-quarters of the 
horizon — the Adriatic, Tyrol, and Venetia — were 
absolutely clear, but Gromboolia had huddled herself 
in a sort of torpid owl-light. It seemed a hopeless 
thing to seek for detail in that drowsy plain. As 
the sun came up the church bells ceased to ring. 
Though one could not see it, one felt that men*s 
labour had begun in that great chessboard at our feet. 

I think I have realised better from that hour what 
a world it is in which we have the luck to live, and 
what grand miracles surround us every day. 

We left the hill behind us, and struck down 
another shoulder, straight upon the convent of Rua, 
which stands on a little hill alone, surrounded by 
high walls and groves of cypress and of pine. 

It was a rather long tramp, but cool, and our 
path lay over arbutus brush and tall white bushes 
of Mediterranean heath. We sank down exhausted 
in the porch of the convent, with letters of gold 
shining over our heads to denounce the further 



A DOGE'S FARM 271 

entrance of women. We were most hospitably 

received by the monks, who came out to meet 

us in their sandals and long heavy robes of white 

serge. They were friends of the sindaco^ and had 

invited us to breakfast. They brought out a 

wooden table with a clean cloth and the most 

fascinating china marked with a blue cross ; a 

bowl, too, filled to the brim with litres of fresh 

milk, hot coffee, and brown bread. The convent 

walls rose up behind us, tall cypress-trees peered 

over them. Below us lay the plain and the lagunes, 

Chioggia rising black against the dazzling light of 

day, and the smoke of passing steamers clearly 

seen. A charming German monk, pale as his 

clothes, waited upon us. He was deeply depressed 

by his surroundings. His eyes filled with tears on 

hearing once more his native tongue. ** Yes," said 

this melancholy Teuton, '* that's Chioggia, and those 

are the lagunes. There are plenty of cypress-trees 

in our garden — vines too. But these things are 

always the same — not like our woods at home. 

Have some more coffee ? " 

Thus one may even live on a Euganean hill, 

where 

" Beneath is spread like a green sea 
The waveless plain of Lombardy, 
Bounded by the vaporous air, 
Islanded by cities fair," 

and pine for Schleswig-Holstein ! 



272 BAYS SPENT ON 

We could not stay at Rua long, for the day 
was advancing, and we had a long walk before us, 
round the hills to Teolo. Our pach lay through 
the most romantic chestnut woods and pergolas of 
grape. The day was cool. Before nine we returned 
once more to the hospice, having walked some 
seventeen miles. But the dawn had refreshed and 
entranced us, and we were unfatigued. 

• • • • • 

The next morning, having slept very well, we were 
seized with the desire of ascending the Monte della 
Madonna, which I had been prevented from doing 
in May. Miss M. was fired by the same wish, 
and we rushed madly towards the summit of that 
peculiarly steep hill. 

Eight a.m. was certainly a late hour to start upon 
a mountain expedition on the 20th of July, and in 
those sun-baked plains. But slumber had refreshed 
us, and a great coolness was breathed upon the 
heated air by hedge and meadow after the rain of 
night. Pale saponaria, heavy with morning dew, 
opened its petals below the hazel copse. Things 
shone and sparkled ; a cool wind ruffled the chestnut 
leaves in the wood through which we passed. We 
ascended quickly, leaving the roofs of Teolo 
immediately below our feet, and scrambling up 
rough ways which in winter serve as watercourses, 
and show like scars upon the face of Monte 



A DOGE'S FARM 273 

Grande. Then we came out upon the shoulder 
of the Madonna, and passed by vineyards and 
cultivated fields, and on into the everlasting chest- 
nut copse by winding pilgrims* paths. At intervals 
there was an '' Ave " rudely carved upon the 
stepping-stones where the devout may pause to 
pray. Most beautiful speckled moths and butter- 
flies floated and played in the warm air around 
the white anthericums, the flowering mint, and 
crimson pinks. 

At last we came out by the small church on 
the summit of the hill. Below us, to the north, 
unchecked by any mound, we suddenly saw the 
whole vast plain of Lombardy — a vision such as 
Venda cannot offer. Miles and miles, countless 
miles of blue, with here and there a fleck of white 
— a city — and beyond all these marble cities one 
larger and fainter than the rest, Verona. 

Members of the Alpine Club may scramble up 
and down and risk their necks above a sea of 
crags and glaciers, stone ledges, and impossible 
arretes. Give me rather a little hill above the 
plain, with gently wooded sides and smiling lawns 
upon its crest, and let me sit there many a long 
and quiet hour, basking in the warm unclouded 
air. Nothing is half as sweet. 

We could not see the Apennines or Alps ; it 
seemed as though there were only sky round and 

18 



274 BAYS SPENT ON 

above this visionary plain, and to the south a thin 
glimmer over the lagunes. Venice was invisible, 
Padua and Chioggia we could trace — minute fairy 
towns, with the throb of their life borne up to 
our imagination only. 

We lay down upon the smooth turf which grows 
up to the edge of the tiny pilgrimage church. It 
struck me that in that huge landscape at our feet 
men had done an immense amount of work ; and 
without in the least altering its larger features 
they had successfully tattooed every inch of it by 
cultivation. I never can lose this impression when 
I look down upon a cultivated plain. It is so exactly 
the opposite of that left on one's mind by an Alpine 
view. 

A broad grass parapet runs round the top of this 
little mountain. Passing round it you have your 
view unchecked only to the west where the back of 
Venda obscures the plain. Gromboolia, therefore, 
is invisible. A white cross stands on a little cairn 
upon the summit. Lilies and pinks grow around its 
feet, and we found the long white skin of a snake 
caught amongst their roots. Tall plants of evening 
primrose grow in the garden by the church. 

*' Oh, it seems to you beautiful here in July," said 
the guardiano^ "but think of winter months. The 
snowstorms come up, they blow around my house, 
they cover it as with a sheet.'' 



A DOGE'S FARM 275 

Snow — the very naming of the thing seemed 

impossible. Here was a summer hill, its breast 

heaving gently below the gauze of midday heat 

which covered it. 

• • • • • 

That afternoon I said goodbye to Teolo, and 
the friends who had received me there with such 
geniality and kindness. Two of them went with 
me to Abano, and the carpenter drove us. The 
mouse seemed not a whit embarrassed by this load. 
Indeed, we rattled gaily down the steep hillside, 
where but some two months past an equal load had 
been dragged so dismally at dawn. We did not 
see my former acquaintance, the coachman clown. 
But I thought of him, of his roses, his bundles, 
and his oppressive steed, as we passed the abode of 
his adored. A flush of tamarisk was over the moat 
of that deserted palace. The carnation plants were 
all in bloom. 

We stayed again to visit Praglia. The cheerful 
convent clown welcomed us with beaming smiles. 
He carried his gallantry towards us so far as to 
throw himself into a deep well, clinging, cat-like, 
to the brickwork, to tear away large tufts of 
maidenhair. Poor fronds, how fresh and green 
they grew amongst the fig-leaves on the remem- 
brance of a spring long dead ! The sunlight 
withered them in our hot hands. As usual all the 



276 DAYS SPENT ON 

place was flooded through with sunlight. The 
clown knocked down the same archangel in the 
refectory, and dusty shafts of light and dying 
butterflies lingered on the floor. The light of 
afternoon pierced through the library windows, and 
rested on the picture of a forehead which indeed 
is here divine. 

That was the last I saw of Praglia. With sorrow 
we left the great deserted convent, the sun upon its 
crimson roofs, the shades of evening creeping through 
its olive-yards upon the hill. 

As we approached the station of Abano, and 
consequently civilisation, I gazed with sudden wild 
dismay upon my small luggage and general 
appearance. For my clothes had witnessed the 
midnight ascent of Venda and the morning climb 
of the Madonna, and were not such as to dazzle 
the beholder. A great fear seized me as I con- 
templated dragging all my country triumphs into 
an elegant first-class carriage. There was a large 
wicker basket with two kilos of fresh figs under 
one arm, my hold-all containing the immensely long 
roots of six rose-trees (the rose peculiar to the 
Euganean district) under the other, and in my hands 
I held a colossal bunch composed of every flower 
that blows upon the hills at Teolo, with two more 
bundles of roots, and an erection of dried grasses 
presented to me by the schoolmistress of that village, 



A DOGE'S FARM 277 

a thing most terrible to behold and ten times worse 
to carry. However, as the train steamed into the 
station a familiar broad-beamed beaver, surmounting 
a friendly visage, and a pair of flopping sleeves 
waving madly from a window of the train, announced 
the presence of A. I bade adieu to my companions, 
in whose society I had spent such pleasant hours, 
and, regardless of adverse criticism, carted all my 
vegetables into A/s compartment. This gentleman, 
having informed me first that I had grown extremely 
ugly during my residence in the hills (a fact which 
was absolutely correct, for my face was rendered 
scarlet by long walks under a July sun, and the 
dainty tattooing of mosquitoes), commenced an 
uninvited attack upon the figs. His humour was 
sunny, for he had been worrying his friends 
at Padua, and had secured several uninteresting- 
looking volumes from the archives of that city. 
He had been out on a lark, and was returning 
without fever. 

We reached Vescovana at eight. Never had the 
Doge's Farm seemed so full of joy and peace. 
The shadows of evening were creeping through its 
gardens. Its inhabitants surrounded me and all my 
trophies with a kindness very pleasing to my spirit. 
The roses had been born again. The air was full of 
a fragrance fainter and almost sweeter than that of 
early spring. My room was a garden for the gods. 



278 DA YS SPENT ON A DOGE'S FARM 

Far away through the open windows I saw the 
night come over the blue backs of sleeping Euga- 
nean hills, and I remembered that the little boys 
of Teolo were coming up the street that hour to 
play upon their occarini. 




THE WALLS OF ESTE IN THE EUGANEAN HILLS 
[From Professor Bittier's " The Lombard Coimmines "] 



To face pUi^e 278 



CHAPTER XX 



LAST DAYS 



NATURE, in these last days, has grown most 
wonderfully still. That gilded heat has gone 
from the air ; there is an absolute distinctness in 
every object. June is long dead. On this earth one 
season is usually spent in looking for signs of the 
next, and in July I have seen autumn. 

This afternoon we drove to the '' Fontana," which 
is the last farm where the threshing-machine had 
to work. Everything was finished before we arrived, 
and the place was very dead and silent, though all 
the men and women still lingered on the threshing- 
floor, hanging about in groups. You saw that the 
harvest was over and done for this year. The 
workers sank down upon their sacks, the slim girl 
leaning against her lover. Above them the pergola 
spread, drooping heavy with grapes. 

There was a dead, dull look about the machine. 

The machinista put its boards together with a sort 

of sorrow. Every one looked tired, but chiefly 

depressed or gone back to that state of indifference 

279 



28o DAYS SPENT ON 

which marks these men in ordinary life. There 
cannot be always excitement, and then they had got 
to marry, which is a more serious matter than court- 
ship in a stubble field. Later in the evening I met 
them straggling home in couples along the bank of 

the Adige. No one smiled. 

• • • • • 

In the garden there is a whole new birth of 
flowers, gladiolus of innumerable shades, sunflowers 
ten feet high and more, blue agapanthus lilies 
where day lilies once had been, and a glow and 
a glory of zinnias over every bed. It would 
be difficult to find a soil more suited to these 
splendid flowers than that of Lombardy. There 
are huge trees of pink hibiscus, crimson Cape 
myrtles, red-hot pokers, and countless convolvulus. 
Indeed, things of more colour and a greater 
endurance than those fragile blooms dear to our 
hearts in spring. 

The granaries are full of grain, the cornfields 
brown. Scarcely a gleaner even in the line of 
stubble where the straw was stacked. 

Courtship is over. The nights are almost silent. 
Young birds have spread their wings, tadpoles have 
turned to tiny frogs, and these again have grown 
large. The fireflies give no light, save where here 
and there one twinkles in a rose-bush out of season. 
As for the nightingales, they have grown hoarse and 



A DOGE'S FARM 281 

almost ceased to sing ; sometimes a croaking cuckoo 
flies off startled at his own cracked voice. The 
dragon-flies must all be dead, the bees seek honey in 
the beds, for the flowers of the vine have turned to 
grape, the Virginia creeper is covered by big berries. 
The leaves on the willow and poplar have grown 
stiffer ; small winds scarcely make them tremble. 
The ditches are bare, and the water-snakes cross 
over the withering grass disconsolate. 

Indeed, all nature has had its springtime and is 
resting. That throb and rush of intensest life 
which filled the whole land in June is dead. The 
heart of summer is laid bare to the sunlight of 
interminable days. Two more months and it will 
burn in the light of autumn, and winter follow and 
spring, and the old miracle of harvest be worked 
once more about the Doge's Farm. 

So with the flowers of a lowland summer I too 
went, turning to greet a second summer in the Alps. 
Little strings pulled at my heart. I loved the 
mountains, but very well I had learned to love the 
plain, and the joy which only Italy can give was 
strong within my soul still. 

The dogs and I walked out for the last time 
amongst the fields. The cool voice of the Adige 
was calling, but all the land was dry. Stubble and 
clods, clods and stubble, and a strange Sunday silence 
over the tired land. 



EPILOGUE 

" I climb'd the roofs at break of day ; 
Sun-smitten Alps before me lay. 

I stood among the silent statues, 
And statued pinnacles, mute as they. 

Perchance, to lull the throbs of pain. 
Perchance, to charm a vacant brain. 

Perchance, to dream you still beside me. 
My fancy fled to the South again." 

Tennyson, The Daisy, 

THUS, then, I left Gromboolia and took my 
train for Milan. But one last look I gave 
towards the plain, and in the early morning climbed 
the Duomo stairs. There, standing high amidst the 
airy multitude of marble forms, I looked forth upon 
the mighty panorama, and bade farewell to Lom- 
bardy. But my eyes lingered towards the east which 
held the Doge's Farm. Faint blue plain, faint blue 
sky, with no horizon line to mark where the two 
embraced — a city and a sea of fields, and over all 
that absolute calm and haze which form the charm 
of Lombardy. 

A few hours more, and I was up on the southern 

282 



DA YS SPENT ON A DOGE'S FARM 283 

side of the Gotthard, amongst the chestnut groves 
which spread huge branches over mountain meadows 
and mossy hamlet, where white cascades dash down 
from upland snows to shine amidst deep shadows 
and impenetrable pine. 

But far back I knew the stubble fields were sleeping 
under the same sun as gilded all the boulders on 
the granite mountains. And as the gates of the 
unforgiving Alps closed in upon me, shutting tight 
the entrance back upon Italian valleys, I thought of 
the plain below them, of the long white roads, white 
oxen, whiter clouds ; of the willow hedge, the ditch, 
the golden threshing-floor, and of those happy 
summer days spent on a Doge's Farm. 



y 



INDEX 



A., 8i, 82, 85, 89 f, loi, 103, 

105, 115, 170, 214, 224, 230, 

236, 239, 277 
Abano, 254, 255, 269, 275, 276 
Adige, 47, 49, 55, 70, 106, 115, 

179, 204, 214, 244 fF, 281 
Adriatic, 47, 48, 56, 244, 270 
Alps, 16, 26, 47, 49, 50, 237, 

250, 270, 281, 283 
Angelico, Fra, 22 
Angelo, II, 113, 116, 121 f 
Anne, Queen, 57 
Apennines, 47, 56, 112 
Arqua, 34, 95 f 

Baccaglini, 258 f, 264 
Barbaro. See Palazzo 
Barr, Mr., 27 
Battaglia, 95 
Blomlield, Mr., 27, 114 
Boara Pisani, 179 
Bologna, 48 
Borghese, Prince, 41 
Bovi, See Oxen. 



Brown, Mr. H. F., 1 1 
Browning, 173, 174, 238 
Byron, Lord, 13, 15, 40, 94 

Calcondylas, Demetrius, 233 
Canotto, 222 
Carducci, 145 
Carpaccio, 241 
Castel Novo, 265 
Cats, 83 
Cattaia, 95 
Chioggia, 269, 271 
Constantinople, 13, 14 
Crispin de Pass, 27, 28, 78, 79, 
89, 114, 168 

Dante, 81, 85, 103 

Davos, 25 

de Musset, Alfred, 129 

Dieci (farm), 81, 105, 202 

Dolfin, Marchese, of Rovigo, 175 

Donatello, 190 



EccELiNO da Romano, 190 



a8s 



286 



INDEX 



Elvira, 159-62 

Este, 13, 55» 67, 94, 1 10 

family, 54» 55» ^75 

Euganean Hills, 15, 48, 56, 90, 
94 f, no, 119, 225, 253ff; 271 

Fallier, Doge Marin, 54 

Ferrara, 48, 54, 233, 235 

Fire, 213-16 

Fishing, 183 

Flood, 250 

Florence, 113, 114, 148, 193, 

233 
Fontana (farm), 109 

Frederick II., Emperor, 54 
Frederick, The Empress, of Ger- 
many, 26, 83 

Gardens, 16-28, 65, 70, 78 f, 172, 
174, 198 f, 231, 234, 236, 280 
Garibaldi, 176, 178 
Giovanelli, Princess, 177 
Gleaning, 205, 209 fF, 247 
Gorzone Canal, 109, 150 
Granze, 210 
" Gromboolia," 50. Bee Pado- 

VANA. 

Harvest, 21, 27, loi, 132, 202 ff, 

279 
Homer, 34, 81 
Horns, 73f, 78 



Italy, Northern, description of, 
23 f, 26, 28, 264 

Lacaita, Sir James, 114 

L'Albera, 175 

Layard, Lady, 37 

Leaf, Mr. Walter, 52 

Lear, Edward, 50 

Leopardi, 81, 103, 124, 126 

Leucaspide, 26 

Libro d'Oro, 53 f, 57 

Lido, 269 

Lombardi brothers, the, 191 

Lombardy, 16,47,48, 55, 56, 62, 

95, 104, 112, 129, 257, 273, 

282 
London, 57, 58 

Machiavelli, 34 

Manfredini, the, 152, 175 

Mantua, 48 

Marchiori of Lendinara, Signor, 

Maremma dogs, 22, 88, 105, 281 
Merlin, Signori, 167, 180, 197 
Mestre, 87 
Milan, 25, 87, 129, 233, 242, 

249, 282 
Millingen, Alexander van, 14, 39 

Charles van, 14 

Dr. Julius van, 13 

Missolonghi, 13 
Monselice, 20, 94, no 



INDEX 



287 



Montagna, 91, 256, 257 
Montecchio, 226 f, 237 
Monte Grande, 258 
Montegrotto, 269 
Monte Madonna, 118, 121,273, 

276 
Monte Pendice, 118 f 
Monti Berici, 225, 243, 270 
" Muezzin," 42, 203 f 
Murano, 235 f 
Music, 164 ff, 220, 261, 2621 

North, Miss Marianne, 41 

Oxen, 23, 24, 52, 56, 76 f, 81, 
109, 146 f, i54fF, 206 f, 219, 

Oxen, Pugliesi, I78f 

Padovana, Basso, or " Gromboo- 
lia," 18, 23, 26, 48, 50, 62, 70, 
71, -je, 94, loi, 104, 106, 113, 
126, 140 f, 162, 163 iF, 244-51, 
270 

Padua, 48, 58, 61, 113, 120, 122, 
129, 177, 190 fF, 225, 242, 270 

Palazzo Barbaro, 16, 36, 57, 59 

Palazzo Rosso, 247-50 

Peasants, Italian, 17, 18, 21, 23, 
28, 29, de, 78, 118, 129-37, 
196, 205, 209, 221, 256, 279 f 

Pelizzaro, Beltrame, 54 

Pendice. See Monte 



Petrarch, 95 f 

Pioppa, 219 

Pisa, 53 f 

Pisani, Count Almoro, 13, 43, 59, 
66^ 115 

Evelina, Countess, widow 

of above, notice in Times^ 1 3 ; 
marriage, 1 5 ; capacity for rule, 
29, 39, 147 fF. Memoir, see 
Preface to Second Edition. 

family history, 53-9 

Zecchino of Doge, 37, 50 



Pizzica, 1 1 4 

Po, 47 

Poggio Gherardo, 113, 114 

Pontresina, 16 

Praglia, 89, 91, 95, 255 f, 2751 

Rembrandt, 241 

Robert College, Constantinople, 14 

Rome, 13, 14, 37, 41, 113, 233, 

Ross, Mrs., 114 

Rovigo, 62, 116, 166, 250 

Rua, convent, 270 

Santa Caterina canal, 61 
Sant' Elena, 72 f 
S. Antonio of Padua, 189 fF 
S. Francis of Assisi, 189 
St. Moritz, 16 

Shelley, 48, 94, 138, 139, 253, 
264 



288 



INDEX 



Silkworms, 119, 120, 177, 226, 

258 
Stables, 72, '](i1^ 88, 131, 146 f, 

152 iF, 179, 248 
Stanghella, 19, 62, ']S^ 164 f, 172, 

192, 221 
Stra, 58 
Symonds, J. A., 35, 36, 45, 113, 

116 f, 120, 162, 232 

Tasso, 232 
Tavernelle, 226, 242 
Tennyson, 157, 163, 282 
Teolo, 95, 113, 116, ii8f, 168, 

254f, 275 
Threshing, 217 fF 
Ticino, 47 
Trissino, 226 ff 

Gianglorgio, 232 f 

Trombini, Professor F., 52 
Tyrol, 242, 245, 270 



Val d'Agno, 226, 237 
Val San Zibio, 95, 97 
Venda (Monte), 118 f, 254, 263 fF, 

276 
Venice, 11, 14, 35, 36, 47, 48, 

53, 54, 113, 123, 233, 245, 

269 
Verona, 129, 273 
Veronese, Paolo, 265 
Vescovana, 12, 14, 15, 22, 36, 

61, 71, 115 z.n^ passim 
Vicenza, 225, 232, 234, 238, 243 
Virgil, 23, 34, 41, 48, 81 
" Vo," 116, 117 

Wales, Prince and Princess of, 

37 
Prince George of, ib. 

Walt Whitman, 140 
Zecchino, Venetian, 37 



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